Thanks everybody for joining us. I’m thrilled to have you on this, on this meeting. I am joined by one of my favorite people in the world, Sam Russell, who is the chief evangelist at FMG.
Sam, anything you wanna tell the group about yourself before we get going?
Oh, you’re one of my favorite people too. Thank you. I am so happy to be here. Hello, everybody. If we haven’t had the chance to meet before, I’m Samantha Russell, and I have been helping the advisers with marketing and client communications for the better part of a decade. I guess that’s I should stop saying that. It’s been over a decade now.
And I just absolutely love the way that communication strategies are always changing in the mediums and the channels we use. So it’s really fun for me to be here and talk with you all and Sean about how to talk about this election.
Yeah. Well, I’m I’m looking forward to it. Let me do some quick housekeeping. First of all, again, I’m Sean Brown. I’m the CEO of YCharts.
And Sam and I have a shared passion for enabling advisers to be better communicators, and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit more about that.
We’re our intention is to talk about the influence of US presidential elections on markets.
We absolutely do not intend to talk about red or blue or anything associated with political views.
We are are viewing this strictly as a way to communicate with clients about things that are on their mind and how to reassure them. So a couple housekeeping, items I I need to say. This is a webinar intended for educational purposes only.
It should not be confused with investment advice from either, YCharts or FMG.
It’s just for educational purposes. If you have any questions during this webinar, please feel free to, enter those questions in the q and a.
You’re gonna have a whole bunch of free things, free use of several different things.
Election guide. Sam’s got a few things she wants to talk to you about.
For those of you on here, you will be emailed a whole bunch of content, but you also see some links and some QR codes throughout this presentation to help you gain access to these things.
And then specific to y charts, if we can help you, to create any kind of visuals, that’s what we’re in the business of doing. Happy to assist you in doing so. So with that said, let’s dive into things.
So, again, the November fifth, Tuesday, I think it is, is election day. And it’s super interesting in my home. And, Sam, I don’t know if I told you this, but my son Quinn just turned eighteen.
Oh, okay.
He he gets the opportunity to vote in a in a very interesting election as his first experience.
But just last night at the dinner table, he totally coincidentally, he’s asking me. He’s like, well, what happens to markets in elections? And that’s what we intend to talk about. So we’re gonna talk about understanding client worries. We’re gonna talk about boosting client confidence and being in touch with clients.
Sam, who is absolutely an expert on communicating and communicating insights is gonna help us better understand the best practices there.
And then we’re gonna talk to you about a couple solutions that we provide. I think our big thing in summary is communicate. If we can be helpful in helping you communicate, we would love to. But our our biggest piece of advice is do communicate, and we’d love to take any questions that you may have.
Yeah. And just, you know, one of the things that I wanted to mention is that we love hearing from all of you. And if we were in a big room, we’d be, you know, having people raise their hand and say things. So in the chat, if you have something to add, remember everybody on the call can see it. So if there’s something you’ve sent out that worked really well with your clients or maybe something that was a blunder, we’d love to learn from each other. So feel free to, put that in the chat, and we can all see it together.
So let’s first start with what what’s on the mind of an adviser’s clients?
Put a link down here at the bottom, but, this group, Thriving Center of Psychology, did a survey of about a thousand individuals.
Fifty fifty, male, female, a good dispersion of ages.
And the big things they found are a whole lot of people are anxious and potentially moving all the way into depressed about politics.
So the very topic of politics is, for many, not a very comforting topic, and it’s something that is on their mind enough that is creating physical symptoms of or psychological symptoms of anxiety, depression, and certainly concern. So, Sam, anything from you? Is this, you know, when we get out of our day to day roles, is this something you’re hearing about from friends that elections are on their mind and concerns about those things?
Yeah. I’m I’m one one hundred percent.
It’s you know, I think for a lot of people, people stop even paying attention unless they’re, like, a political junkie. They, like, say, I gotta take a news break. I have to stop paying attention to it for a few days or a week at a time because it just overwhelms me. And, you know, over the last few years, politics has become more and more divisive even with people, you know, fighting with family members and things like that.
And so I think there’s a lot of people feeling this way. Yet at the same time, when it comes to their finances or their money, those headlines that are meant to scare us, we can’t help but pay attention to and want to ask somebody, like, should I be worried about this?
And so, you know, those are all the things that we’re hearing on the ground. And and from the advisers that I work with specifically, they’re telling me, you know, that it’s like people don’t want to be worried about this. They don’t wanna buy into it. They know it comes around every four years, yet it’s almost like they can’t help themselves.
Mhmm.
And so I actually, posted this to LinkedIn a couple days ago in preparation for today, and we would love to have all of you give us your input in the chat. So the question I asked on LinkedIn was, when it comes to the election and its impact on the markets, how do you handle it with clients, or how are you handling it this year? A, not something you see that your clients are bringing up to you. B, some people broach the topic, but you try to not linger on it, c, you share some visuals, charts, graphs, emails around the election with clients and prospects proactively, or d, you just stay away from it completely. So let’s see in the chat what everybody says, and we’ll kinda get a sense, Sean, of, where people are. I’m seeing a lot of c’s, which is great. Some b’s.
Yep. B’s and c’s seem to be a whole lot.
We’re all average students here. Lots of b’s and c’s.
Somebody mentioned the dimensional funds study from a few years ago. Mike Whitmore said he shares that, which shows it doesn’t really matter who’s in the executive office.
Mike d said, mostly c, but prefer d. I feel you on that, Mike. Sometimes it feels like stepping into, the fire.
Kevin, Una said, see, no charts, just conversation.
Chris said, I discussed it with them at length, so maybe more in person conversations. But we’re seeing a lot of b’s and c’s. So either clients bring it up, and then you tend to talk about it but not linger on it, or you’re proactively sharing things.
What I’m not seeing a lot of is a Mhmm.
That the clients don’t bring it up.
Yeah.
And I think that’s very telling, which is just that when it comes, obviously, to their investments, people if they hear about something on CNBC or in the news somewhere, they are gonna look to you for that reassurance.
Yeah.
And that was the biggest thing I noticed. The a’s, there are a few, but there aren’t a whole lot. So it is something that, reactively, at a minimum, people need to be prepared for, but we’re gonna talk about trying to be proactive in communication.
And here were just some of the responses that we got on LinkedIn. Alex said it’s a case by case for my clients. Some would rather I not draw their attention to things like market volatility.
Others definitely appreciate the heads up. Putting things into perspective with just a few slides and charts typically puts their minds at ease. And I love that, and I think that’s so great to really focus on is that when you zoom out and you look at the long term perspective, it will put people’s minds at ease. And so we’re so excited to give you all so many great visuals and charts that are gonna help you do just that for free just for attending today.
Michael said a combination of b and d. I’ve learned there’s no upside to expressing political opinions with clients. And that is something we really wanted to make a note of here is that we are in no way, shape, or form advising that you start sharing your political opinions with your clients. For some of you, I know you do that, and that works for you. But what we’re saying is more communicating about zooming out and what the long term implications are on the markets related to elections, not your personal political beliefs.
And then Nate said, most of the time, I feel like they aren’t really looking for an answer, but just need to vent a little bit. And that is so true. Right? I think one of the things that is so important to remember is that when there is no communication about something in any area of our lives, personal relationships, finances, we tend to think worst case scenario. When we don’t know the answer to something or we’re worried about something and we don’t get a communication, we go to the worst case scenario. So just by putting people’s minds at ease and being a little proactive can make such a big difference.
Yep. And, Sam, I’ve mentioned this too before.
I always draw back on the flight experience where you’re on a flight that’s turbulent.
That flight, turbulent flight can be just fine with you if the pilot is communicative.
When the pilot is silent, you start to imagine things. You start to worry about things, and and and your mind takes hold of things. So much like with advisers, saying something and saying something proactively, I know this is on your mind, makes for a smooth flight.
It’s so true. And if somebody and to use your analogy, if somebody is a pro flyer, they fly all the time, they might not even listen when the captain comes on. They can tune that noise out. But the people who are stressed or anxious about it, it’s gonna put them at ease. Same thing with, you you know, you all. If the people who aren’t really worried about it to begin with get an email from you with a great visual, well, they don’t have to spend much time reading it. But for those who are feeling anxious or worried, it’s gonna make such a difference.
Yep. And I would also say on on that exact line of thought, even somebody who’s an expert, they know that email arrived. They may not open it. They may not read it. They may at least absorb the subject line and a few lines underneath. They know you’re thinking about them.
Yes.
So where a lot of benefits.
So what are the the common questions that we’d like to tackle?
How’s the election outcome going to impact my investments? Is this a good time for us to get on the sidelines?
Is it a good idea to hold cash during an election year? You know, I what am I what should I be doing here? There’s so much uncertainty in the market. Should I just be on the sidelines?
Should I, change my investment strategy? Is this a good time? Is this a life event type of thing? Should I be changing my investment strategy leading up to or just post an election? And how should I prepare for market volatility?
And that one about the cash too, just to point out, I’ve heard from a a decent number of advisers saying for the folks approaching, you know, they’re getting ready to retire, they’re getting ready to want to start pulling money out. That’s a big one. So I love that we’re gonna answer that question specifically.
Yeah. And and let’s do it. I I’m gonna show you now just a handful of visuals. This is, five of about ten to fifteen visuals that are available in our study.
Not enough time to go through the whole study today, but why don’t we tackle some of the, some of the Let’s do it.
Poignant ones.
So this slide, the everybody probably knows the CBOE, publishes a volatility index called the VIX.
This is the VIX index shown on election years over the past thirty some odd years.
And, basically, what this says is a factual thing is, you know, a normal, bound for the VIX is between thirteen and nineteen.
You guys can see that during the lead up to election, things do get more volatile. It it just on average, it does. Things, you know, get about fifty percent higher volatility.
And then at the after the election leading up to the inauguration, things start to settle back into exactly their run rate normal thing. So if you are a trader, and we all know traders look for opportunities to make a quick dollar by seeing, some aberrations or some incongruous thing going in going on in the market, leading up to a long election might be a good time to capture some quick profits, but I really don’t know a single wealth adviser who says, I’m in this to make a quick buck for my client. I think most say, we’re in this for the long run, and we have a plan that contemplates the long run.
Anything you’d add on that, Sam?
I think it just you know, to me, the the VIX goes hand in hand a lot of times with individual, or actually, I’m gonna say individual, but how society emotionally is feeling about things. And so, you know, it is sort of a roller coaster ride leading up to that day, and it’s like you feel like you’re on that roller coaster slowly tick tick tick getting to the top of the hill Mhmm. And then you get to come down. And so, you know, I always look at the VIX as kind of being an emotional barometer for how society is feeling as well.
Yep. So this emotional barometer, it’ll have it at top. It’ll have it down, but it’s gonna get back to steady state if the future is anything like history.
Here’s the big cash question.
This is the cash question right here, which says, just so everybody understands this chart from nineteen fifty through two thousand twenty four. What would happen if, you were in a a the S and P five hundred and during election years, you pulled your money and put it on the sidelines during election year.
The good news is if you had done that, you would still get, six point three percent average annual return. That’s good news. It’s greater than zero. The bad news is that substantially less than you would have gotten if you had just kept the money in the market. You would have had an average of eight percent annual return. And so, you know, that would have been a three point three million dollar nest egg, growth as opposed to just south of a million dollar nest egg growth.
It’s it’s always like that. You know, we all know the idea of exponential growth and how this compounding works yet. Oh, six point three four percent versus eight percent doesn’t seem like that big of a difference, and this is why, you know, we all love this industry so much because then you look at the numbers in three point two million versus nine seventy nine thousand, what a drastic difference? Yeah. Compounding. Percentage numbers just don’t illustrate that enough.
Compounding is just absolutely magical. So, like, this picture, you share this with your clients, stay the course. It does not behoove you to pull out of the market. If you did, here’s what would potentially happen to you.
You would receive an, a return, but from a compounding standpoint, it’d be substantially less.
This is why I love visuals so much because you could say to clients, you know, if you were to pull out and go to cash during all these elections, you would receive six point three four percent annual return versus we stay invested eight percent. That does not have the wow factor that a chart like this has. And so communicating with these types of visuals, really a picture is worth a thousand words for sure.
Absolutely.
Alright. Another another visual for you is, well, what happens under Republican administrations and what happens under Democratic administrations?
This picture kinda says the the markets continue to go up. Now, sure, there are some slight aberrations like like Nixon back in the late sixties, early seventies, and and Bush, you know, in the in the nineties, excuse me, the the two thousand one to two thousand nine time frame, it it’s all kinda noise. The market continues to progress upward, and there is nothing of of any substance that says, that that markets, under blue or red, failed to go up. It looks like they just continue to go up. And if past history is any indication of future, this is what the picture will look like for the next several hundred years too.
Yeah. And I have seen so many different variations of this chart. I love that, you know, you guys have made it a little bit more fun with the pictures of the presidents down at the bottom. But, you know, to your point, I think, again, this is that idea of zooming out and saying, you know, we’re in this for the long term. We have a plan. We have a goal. We have a strategy.
And this just visual just reminds people of what that is.
Because everybody wants to think that whatever’s happening right now Mhmm.
Mhmm.
Is just different. This time, it’s different. This time, it’s gonna go a different way. And so this is just such a helpful visual reminder and makes for a stronger communication strategy.
Yep.
And and Charlie had an Charlie I don’t know if I said your last name correctly. Roeher, had a had a great comment for context for even you pick a negative data point, but, like Bush has nothing to do with the administration. Had to do with some exogenous factors like nine eleven and the great financial crisis. Right? So the markets keep going up. And when they do hit these exogenous things, they recover, and then they continue to go up.
Right.
Alright. So if you only invested, you picked a kooky, investment philosophy, which is I’m only investing. Otherwise, I’m staying on the sideline unless, a certain political party, is in office.
Back to the point Sam made earlier about compounding, sure, there’s some slight historical differences between, the average annual returns during red years and and blue years, but it’s kinda noise compared to the stay in the market. The annualized return if you stay in the market is eight percent.
You’re seeing a substantially lesser return if you’re picking and choosing what, investing during different political, party presences in the White House. So I guess reiterating the same point.
Yeah.
Many more of those slides to share with you.
We, you know, again, we’ll we’ll provide these. I think they’re available in the chat right now. Certainly, you’ll get an email follow-up. But, Sam, so the data’s out there.
We’ve got the data. Many parties have the data out there. Let’s turn our focus now to, yes, we know what the data is, but let’s talk about how do you communicate that data. So I am gonna turn things over to you here.
Yes. So the first thing that hopefully we’re illustrating to you all is whether people are asking you the question, what’s gonna happen with the market and the election? Being proactive in your communication is always the best strategy. Right?
I always like to say, people do not fire their adviser for over communicating, but they might fire you and hire someone else if you don’t communicate enough. So this is just a, screenshot of an example here of, Chad Chubb, an adviser friend of mine, with Wealth Heal, and they have every single, you know, week, this email going out, the Wealth Keel weekly. And so that they’ve given it a little name. People can expect to see it in their inbox, and they know that it’s gonna be what they call news you can use.
So they have updates on the markets, anything related to the markets. And if you open up one of those emails, it is, headlines from maybe CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, different publications, and then a quick summary of why the, you know, clients of this firm should either care or not care. And I love that because it’s not even like, you don’t even need to start from scratch and write this whole big blog or article yourself if you don’t want to. You can just be responding to things that are already out there.
So when you think about your own communication strategy, having a regular schedule, you know, if I were to ask everybody on the call, how many how often do you communicate with clients? Do you have a regular email that you send? Is it once a month, every other week, every week? I’d love to know in the chat, how often are you doing it, and is it a schedule where you do not miss?
So Melissa Day said every week. Love that, Melissa. Thank you for sharing. We see a lot of people who are doing it every ninety days, maybe once a month.
You wanna get on a schedule. I like to say don’t do it less than once a month. So at a minimum, you need to do it once a month because we all have short attention spans and any, you know, in more infrequently than that starts to get lost in the noise. But having it be a regular thing that people expect to see your name in their inbox really, really, really becomes, just really proactive communication that people can count on.
I’d also challenge you all to have a list of prospects and do something similar for prospects. So, you know, I just heard a story from an adviser that we work with. She has been she has a list of small business owners in her community, and she has been sending regular emails out to this list for over five years. There was a woman on it who was reading her emails.
She never heard from this woman, the woman that was scheduled an email or scheduled a call, anything. And after five years said, okay. I’m selling my business, and I’m ready to work with you. Like, I loved all the content you’ve shared over the years, always have stayed top of mind.
Right? So having a list like this for prospects and sharing something similar is such a good idea as well. And in these communications, right, people that have limited time, limited energy to pay attention to things. This should not be where you’re writing a dissertation on the markets and using even terminology like the VIX.
Right? I wouldn’t necessarily just say, here’s what the VIX is doing because the average person is not gonna know what that means. You wanna explain, here’s a chart that shows market volatility, and this is what, you know, it means for you and your investment. So getting rid of the jargon and just reading writing it so a ninth grader could understand is really, really imperative here.
Looking at the chat here, we see a lot of people who are doing things at least a few times a month. So, again, if you’re not already on a regular communication plan, you want to be thinking about putting all of your clients in one group in your CRM and then having a plan for how often you’re regularly going to communicate with them. So that would be that every Friday email or every other Tuesday email, something like that. And then when something timely happens, you can send, just like this example here, a timely email, which our research has shown gets the highest open and click through rates of ever anything because if it’s related to something happening in the news that people have questions about, they wanna hear from you. So if you remember just a couple was it three Mondays ago now when the market was tanking? I think it dropped four or five percent that day.
Everybody was freaking out, and it was just a, what, a twenty four hour event, Sean. Right? It wasn’t very long, but we had a lot of advisers we work with saying, do you have anything that, you know, we we can send to clients? And so through FMG’s Do It For Me program, we will write a piece of content that you can send out within twenty four hours to address something that’s happening. And so this is an example of one of those emails.
I know not everybody subscribes to the do it that fast. Like, sometimes it’s more of a wait and see approach. But the idea is when there is something going on, sometimes you wanna be proactive in your communication.
And definitely, if that would have stretched on a number of days, you would absolutely wanna have something ready to send. So these timely emails, these are the ones that you’re going to send outside of your regularly scheduled programming, that are gonna address big things that are happening that everybody’s talking about in the news. Again, just positioning yourself as the voice of reason, as the person who’s not trying to get more clicks from a news site or more views on cable news, but is just trying to help your clients make sense of the noise.
Mhmm.
And then with timely content, you can also turn it into social media posts. So this is just an example of an Instagram click through that we have available in FMGs, content library for you to use if you’re on Instagram, which I know more and more advisers are adopting. And so this is you know, Instagram is such a visual platform.
So we have reels that you can use. We have carousels you can use, charts. And so you’re able to just upload them to Instagram and be sharing the same type of timely content, but in a social, post platform instead. And one of the things I really wanna point out is you’ll notice that a lot of the verbiage and all of this is the same. It’s just repurposing the images to be appropriate for the platform. So on social media, if you’re on Instagram, it’s very visual. So what you share there is gonna be more photos and charts versus if it’s, you know, maybe a LinkedIn post or a, a thread, then it’s gonna be much more verbal and written in nature.
Mhmm.
And here’s just a couple examples of educational resources that you can share as well.
Obviously, YCharts put this amazing download that you can all access, and I know we’ve already linked to it. And you’ll get an email with it of how the presidential elections impact the market. And, Sean, all of the visuals there, right, people can just click on them and actually download them individually to use in their communications however they want.
Absolutely. And I’ll show in a little bit, you know, those that are subscribers, you know, can put their logo on and and everything. Those that aren’t, take it, use it as you see fit.
And and and, you know, we’ve we’ve done the research. Feel free to use it for your benefit. And as Sam was saying, you can multi multipurpose the content, maybe a a slightly different SKU or verbiage or pictures, but, you know, you have once and use multiple times.
Yeah. Make it your own for sure. So, again, timely content. So right now, the election’s top of mind.
It is going to get more comments on social media, more opens on email, more click through rates because it is timely. People like timely content, and they’re interested in getting, you know, the of others on something that’s happening in the news. So on that vein, an adviser we work with at FMG, used a bunch of the resources we have and put together a whole page on his website, a landing page, which is he calls it votes and values. And so if you go to Plan First’s website, which we’ll include in the the show notes here for you to to click through, he’s got, like, a quarterly report.
He’s got some of the, charts and visuals that are in the FMG dashboard, and he just created a whole landing page. So anytime he shares anything on social media regarding these things, he’s directing them back to this landing page, which also has the schedule a time to chat button, which I absolutely love. Just, again, reiterating that he’s helping people cut through the noise, zoom out, make sense of things, and he’s got that content. We’ll add it as it becomes available as time goes on.
We kinda see that now, you know, if you go to the website of any of the major news publications, they have a last updated on with when they’ve added, you know, something on that conversation.
So you can get really creative. Again, all the resources that we have at both FMG and YCharts, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for all of you to just share them. We want you to share them and be that that voice that is the voice of reason. So these are just some different ways you can do it.
And then, of course, these are all one to many. Right? So being proactive, showing prospects, potential clients that you’re somebody who’s gonna be always there to talk with them about anything that they might wanna talk about.
Obviously, with clients, same thing. But, of course, you also wanna have more of that one to one communication around these topics, when you need to. So that could look like, you know, if you have a really skittish client, maybe taking a few of these charts and sending a personalized email to them that’s even the language is even more a little hand holding, walking them through what it means, or having a a conversation with a new client or somebody that this is your first time going through an election cycle with them, talking about a previous client, and kind of a case studying for them, what it looked like, why you acted the way you did, and how it benefited them in the long run. So, again, the more specific you can be with certain folks who need it, the better, but you could still use the same charts and visuals. It’s just repurposing for those individuals.
And then we’ve got some great posts here. We say don’t reinvent the wheel, but, really, you know, these are all some of the charts you’re gonna find in that YCharts election guide. And here are just some examples of social posts that other advisers have put out there in the wild, real time that and show you how they use them. And so you can just see, like, how engaging is this when you see this kind of visual and then a little bit of context from the adviser.
One thing that I will say is that there is something we find working really well on social media right now that the algorithms like and that people like as well, which is called zero click content. So if you look at Gloria’s there all the way on the left, how she really explains what you’re seeing in the chart, what it means.
She’s giving away all of the information, not just saying go read my blog post to check it out. That’s really a best practice on social media right now because the more context you can give something, the more someone doesn’t have to click off the platform to go read about it. They can just get the information right there in the post itself. That’s gonna get you more comments, which is gonna show your post to more people.
So the more you can say about the image that you’re sharing right there on the platform, the better. And we are gonna give away to all of you today, a social post that you can use with that visual yourself, and we wrote it to be zero click content. So everybody’s gonna get that. Thank you to YCharts and FMG.
It was so fun to put that together, but you’ll all have that so that you can share it on your own feeds.
Yeah. And, Sam, these examples you showed just show how quick and easy it is to produce content. You know, when you got partners like, FMG or or YCharts, you know, take the charts and and then write a quick blurb that explains it, and you have this out the door in forty five seconds.
You don’t need to start from scratch and and, you know, come up with all the theories on your own.
So let’s talk a little bit more about, you know, the impact of these solutions. And, Sam, you were kind of alluding to this, but do you wanna talk in more detail about this?
Yes. And this is a great segue because I see from Mike in the chat, he just asked is are these compliance approved? So we put them through our own internal compliance, checkpoints.
But if you are a subscriber, of FMG and you’re using our dashboard to send out communications, it would still go through your compliance officer for approval before it can be shared via email or social. If you’re not using FMG, then, of course, whatever compliance process you normally put it through, you’ll want to use. But, yes, internally, our own compliance teams have, signed off on these, and we’re always gonna use language that avoids any, you know, includes the disclosures that you need and and those kinds of things. But we’ve created the taking this one visual, that we talked about already about staying invested for the long term and how the markets performed over various presidencies, We use that to write both an email and a social post that you can send out, and, of course, they’re editable.
So we’re sending it to you as a Word doc so that you could go in and if you wanna erase something, maybe you don’t like the finger pointing emoji and you wanna make it a bullet point, whatever it is, you can really make it your own. So this is coming to everybody who signed up today. But these are just one example of how to take a visual and then build a communication around it because we know that a a picture really is worth a thousand words. Many of you might have heard me say before, our brains actually process imagery sixty thousand times faster than text.
So the visual is gonna be the first thing everyone sees, and then the context you provide around it will be the second.
Awesome.
So just to give you a couple examples, that we were alluding to before, you know, you will get, an email with the links in the report.
Those of you who wanna just use them right from the report are welcome to. Those of you that are subscribers or on trial with YCharts, come in. Your logo can get branded on it. Put your own customization on things.
That’s on the left. On the right, whole bunch of prebuilt presentations where you can use our our slides or use other slides that you’ve accumulated from somewhere else. Other visuals add your two paragraph commentary, and it looks to your prospects or clients like a very professionally produced report by you. And that is obviously our goal is, don’t, we’re trying behind the scenes to make our clients be able to easily show how smart they are.
So take it as you see fit.
Love that. Yeah. And so, we actually have a partnership with YCharts where we take a chart, of theirs usually about once a month, and we’ll build content around it. If you’re an FMG subscriber and you log in to the dashboard, you can see I just searched the word election, and you’ll see any of the content we have around the election there for you to use. And it’ll tell you whether it’s an email, a social sequence, which means multiple posts over time, an email sequence, which means multiple emails over time, or just a downloadable, which you can use how you see fit.
If it says do it for me under the author, then that means it’s part of our do it for me, marketing program where you basically hire FMG and have a concierge assigned to you, to help you execute your marketing. So not only do you get the content and the dashboard and all the tools, but but someone from our team will execute on your behalf. So we love partnering with YCharts to bring their charts to our content, as well as, you know, making it even easier for you to communicate on social and email. So look for all of that in the dashboard again just by searching collection.
Yep.
So where we started, we’ve got a guide out there.
It will come in an email to you following this. I believe we also had it in the in the chat.
If for whatever reason that doesn’t work, you do see download visual image, view and modify.
You will be able to do as you would like in it.
And and I might just sum things up, and then we’ll we’ll take a few more questions, Sam.
Communicate.
Be proactive in communication.
This isn’t about, red or blue. It’s about understanding that the topic of what’s going on in markets may have people worried. It may have the them wondering whether they have the right investment strategy through you. The answer is almost inevitably, yes.
Stay the course. We showed you some visuals that would prove that. But if we can be helpful in, in making it easier for you to proactively communicate what’s going on in these volatile times that we’re heading into in the next seventy days, we’d be thrilled to. But one way or another, I think my conclusion would be to be proactive in your communication.
Your prospects and clients will appreciate it. It will, increase your credibility with them. Don’t overwhelm them with things.
Make it easier for them, and there’s all kinds of ways to do that. And, Sam, anything you’d like to conclude with?
Yeah. There’s a couple questions that I would love to answer. One, that came in said, hi. Can you share or recommend any educational material that my firm can use to develop intuitive content, like video or a picture base.
One thing I would suggest is download these charts that YChart has given you, and then there’s a tool I love called Veed, v e e d, dot I o. And it is a service that allow you to record both yourself and your background or your screen. So you could put a chart up in the same way Sean talked us through what we’re looking at. You could do the same thing, create a one minute video that you share on social media or put an email to client.
So, again, that’s v e e d dot I o. I’ll put it in the chat. Awesome tool. You could put up these charts and record a quick video, and you would have an endless amount of content to share that would be super timely and valuable for both clients and prospects and be a hit on social media.
And any other questions you wanted to pick off, Sam, before I take one?
Let’s just see.
Somebody else was asking about sending out bulk emails, and CRMs, and if there’s a good, you know, one that we recommend.
I think most providers in our space are, you know, really, really play nicely together in terms of the most popular ones like, Wealthbox or Redtail or Salesforce. And so the the main thing is whichever of those CRMs you’re gonna use, getting in the habit of setting up groups. So a group of just clients, a group of just prospects, maybe people that are five years out from retirement and updating those groups regularly. So that way, if there is a chart, maybe, like, the one about going to cash, for instance, and it’s something that maybe your younger clients aren’t gonna be as worried about, but people closer to retirement HR, you could send off a proactive communication just to that group of your list and not feel like you’re overwhelming people with communications. Right? So using your CRM wisely to create those groups is really a marketing best practice to allow you to send those personalized communications.
Great.
I got a a question from Jeff Morrison just asking for pricing plans on YCharts. I’ll tell you, anywhere between three thousand and six thousand dollars per year, but we like you to get in a discussion to figure out where in that is the right configuration that matches your needs. So I’d probably say, please talk to us, but that is those are the boundaries I would paint.
Okay.
Okay. Well, Sam, I think we have, we’ve touched on the the major themes and and our goals. I wanna thank everybody for being on here. Your clients, look to you for guidance. If we can, in some small way, have helped you understand some tricks, tools, and methods for providing that guidance, great. But, otherwise, everybody, thank you for your time, and look forward to engaging with you next time.
Thank you so much, and thanks, YCharts, for having me. It was lovely to be here, and talk to y’all soon.
