Cold Calling vs. Social Media: Which Builds Your Practice?

[0:01] JD: And most servers are so dumb that I can outsmart most of them and get to the good ways by using that information. Right. [0:08] Stephen Wilkinson: Using a technology. Yeah, I'm. I'm an earfer. I haven't earned my s. Surfing is like super hard. [0:16] JD: It is. [0:17] Stephen Wilkinson: It's like. [0:18] JD: Yeah, we were talking about that earlier. I feel like most people out there I would classify as close to beginner. And it doesn't look like they're having fun to me. Nope. [0:31] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. [0:31] JD: So let's talk debate. I posted on the Internet. I. When Brian Graff came out with his podcast recently, I listened to episode one and I kind of talked some mad about him online. I was like this, he did not do a good job. And I chalked it up to like, hey, it was episode number one. You know, if you go to Retireaholics, episode number one, it was a piece of dog too, you know. So let's, let's see how Brian Graff does in number two and number three. Number two is better. And. And then the new one was Schlichter and Tom Clark. I mean, no lie, might be the best 4K podcast in the history of 400K podcasts. Like, it's absolutely insane. So good. Highly recommended. Okay, we are gonna get started on time. All right, here we go. Three, four, two, one. What's up everybody? And welcome to Tall Can Talks. It's a debate style format. I will be your host slash moderator. My name is J.D. carlson. This is a two humans enter, one human leaves. It's a fight to the death. And you in the audience, you will help determine the winner today. Okay, let's meet our debaters, shall we? Stephen Wilkinson has garnered a lot of attention by bringing cold calling to the forefront on LinkedIn. Through video updates, he consistently and transparently documents his journey to add $1 million in new revenue from direct marketing, aka cold calling. Cold emailing. Welcome to the show, Stephen. [2:15] Stephen Wilkinson: Thanks, Judy. Happy to be here. [2:17] JD: Yeah, it's good to have you. Jake Rushton is a guy behind four one Club. He's the Director of Sales and Managing Director at SRP Intermountain and has started a relatively new venture in the company called Zeek Digital where he helps people use video content more effectively. Although he's no newbie to this social media stuff in the 4k space, he has built up quite the reputation and speaks and trains advisors and industry groups all over the country about how to leverage social media. It should be noted that he publicly called out Stephen recently on LinkedIn and said, quote, cold calling is a complete waste of time and the worst thing that you can do. Jake, are you ready to lock horns with Stephen today? I am. [3:07] Jake Rushton: I'm excited to be here. This is. This is interesting because I love Stephen. I think he's an amazing advisor. [3:12] JD: Oh, don't start with a knife. [3:15] Jake Rushton: Just want to say I'm excited and appreciate the opportunity. [3:18] JD: Okay. He's fluffing you up. Before he tries to take you down the niceties, let's quickly go over the rules. Like I said, debate style, format. So just like a presidential debate, I'll ask a question, and then each of you, uninterrupted, will get time to speak. And then we'll do, like, a rebuttal where appropriate. Okay? Now, your time is limited. Okay? So it's tracked by that tall can right above each of your heads. So when the tall can is empty, you are out of your allotted speaking time. Okay? So pay attention to that. You need to choose your words wisely and effectively. Points. You got a little point scoreboard below you there. Points will be awarded for how well you do while answering these questions. Or if you obliterate one of your opponent's points, that might be big points for you. The points will be influenced by the chat bar. So if you all in the chat bar raise a ruckus and you think someone should be getting a lot of points, voice your. Your opinions in the chat bar, and maybe that'll influence the scoreboard. And in the end, oh, acro. [4:26] Jake Rushton: Sin. [4:26] JD: If you say any acronym or initialism you must, you will lose 10 points from your scoreboard because I know you two wussies are drinking like, cherry coke and Arizona iced tea. But don't fret, everyone out there. I will be doing all the drinking for all of you. I will still entertain you. I got Bailey's here, I got coffee, and I plan to drink a whole bunch of it. Okay, so in the end, the audience, this is the last little housekeeping. You, the audience, you will get to vote for the winner. And this will be a massive outcome. Changing in terms of points. Your vote will be a huge amount of points. Think Final Jeopardy. Okay, here we go. Let's. Let's get ready to rumble. Shall we do it? Let's do it. Okay, we're going to start with opening statements. And Jake, I'm going to go to you first. Make your opening statement. Social media content, video, being out there on the Internet. Why is this the way that people should be spending their time? [5:32] Jake Rushton: Well, that's a really great question. The main reason is you can get more awareness the whole game we're playing is getting attention, because if you're reaching one person at one time, there's only so much time in the day. You can only do a very limited amount of work there, which is the problem with it. Right. And I understand it's going to take time for people to adopt the change. And there's a lot of advisors out there that still keep cold calling to, you know, a very important part of their lifestyle. That's how they're raised. Now, the reason you need awareness is that cold call is not going to mean as much if they have never heard of you, seen you know, anything about you. And that's the struggle if you're trying to convince somebody to listen to you. How long do I have? [6:14] JD: You can take as much as you'd like. Just your little can is going to run out. [6:18] Jake Rushton: Okay, so here's the concept and why I think there's a lot of pushback when I say cold calling is not something you should spend your time on. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do warm calling. And that's a big difference. Call avoidance is not what I'm talking about. I'm not afraid to pick up the phone and call anybody, but I don't want to call somebody that has no clue who I am. And I don't want to walk into a meeting where they have no idea who I am. So you could make cold calls all day and get meetings lined up, but if you walk into that meeting, there's no awareness of what you can do for them and change their life in any way. You've already kind of set yourself up for a real tough situation that could be much more valuable of everybody's time if they had some awareness of who you are. And the iPhone's only been around 16 years. We forget how short of time that's been. In our lifetime. We've seen huge changes. Right. I grew up, I had a pager. I get it. I had my first cell phone when I was in school. It's fairly new. And it took 50 years for us to switch from horse and buggy to a car. So I get it. This is hard for us that have been doing cold calling and believe in it, because like Stephen says, it does work, but it definitely has much lower value than doing other things. My final part to that is when you are cold calling, the issue is you're not necessarily bringing any value. There's not an opportunity to. To do much other than try to get a meeting, which isn't necessarily going to Be value right up front. And in my opinion, cold calling is kind of lazy because you might put on a pedestal. I'm working hard because I'm cold calling. But you're not putting in work to bring somebody value. You're just trying to go at them. [7:53] JD: Wow. Okay, Jake hitting, that's what you should do in an opening statement, right? Hit most of your big points. Although I noticed Stephen, he, he tend to talk a lot less about the power of social media, more about all the negative stuff and cold calling, which I like, I like this negativity. But Stephen, this is your chance. You're obviously passionate about this concept. All the work on LinkedIn that you've been doing and everyone paying attention to it. So your opening statement tell us why cold calling is the right approach to win new business. Or if you want, you can take Jake's negative approach and tear the shit out of him too. Either way. But you're up. [8:28] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah, sounds good. Thanks jd so, yeah, I would argue that there's two types of advisors out there in the world, right? Advisors that have practices, established practices, let's call it a million dollars in revenue, right? So those people, maybe they want to flirt with social media, maybe they don't. Someone who's brand new in the 401k space. I think that's crazy. I personally think that focusing on social media is craziness. The reason I think that is because it's all about acquisition of skills. So if I'm a brand new advisor trying to acquire skills, assuming you don't know anything, learning how to communicate to a plan sponsor prospect, and learning like what they think and how their triggers and all those kind of things worth its weight in gold. The other thing that cold calling is going to have over social media is the difference between a linear activity versus a compounding activity. So like cold calling is a very linear activity. If I do, you know, nine hours of cold calling, I get, you know, X results. If I do 27 hours of cold calling, I get, you know, three times the results. It's very linear. There's an equation for it. Social media is way more compounding and so that's great. Social media, if you build out, if you have the time and the skills to build out a whole process around acquiring those clients. Yeah, it'll work at, you know, max, you know, at a peak. But that is a compounding thing. And so I would say if you're a brand new financial advisor and you have a free Sunday. Yeah, make content, why not? Right? Because it's not a Work day. But if it's a work day, I knew as an advisor I'm doing a linear activity because activity is the only thing that matters to pay your bills at that at some point. And it's all about skill acquisition. And so what skills am I acquiring? Well, I need to be acquiring the ability to communicate, to plan sponsor prospects. Me learning how to edit, you know, on a, on a random day is not a skill that in my opinion is going to be worth acquiring over the long term because it's something that can be easily like paid for. Right. And then make another point. Like, if you guys follow me on LinkedIn, I have like, I have like budgeted 20 to $30,000 just for social media editing and all that kind of stuff. I know my videos don't look like that, but I mean, there's real money that goes, that goes into that, that, you know, a new advisor doesn't have. If you're an established advisor, yeah, why not? But if you're an established advisor, you probably have already figured out another way to do direct marketing. And I think every business should have some type of direct marketing in play. [11:10] JD: Well done. Okay, we're going to keep your can running a little bit because the chat bars let me know that your candid start running. Okay, well, don't worry about it. We'll figure this out, guys. Okay, good opening statements. And I get where you're coming out there, Stephen. Yours is very measurable. You can, you can literally look at the statistics and know like, you make 18 calls, you get one lead. We've seen all your numbers on LinkedIn and I think to Jake, you're, we were concerned sometimes with social media. So I have, I have this question for you. What are we concerned about? How do we measure it? You know, how do we know that we're getting the ROI that we're looking for through these posts that we're putting out there? I know we can look at likes, we can look at comments, but is there something else out there? Are you tracking this? Do you recommend that people track it? So a rebuttal to you is, can you track social media the same way that Steve can track cold calling results? [12:01] Jake Rushton: No, definitely not. Because it's not direct marketing, it's brand marketing, which is much bigger and much more important, more valuable. How do you measure your progress at the gym? Right. If you only go for a week, you're not going to see any results. It's going to be a long game and you have to commit fully to it and the results are going to come later. But the results are going to be much larger than if you just pop in. You don't you think you have to get result tomorrow? It's not going to happen. And you don't know the final sales process. The actual decision making process for someone is going to be based a lot on emotion. We do make those decisions on emotion. And a cold call is not going to give that person the opportunity to build that connection with you. The one thing we'll do is have them go to their phones and look up your name if you did happen to magically get them to pick up the phone. And the problem is if there's nothing there for them to see, in most cases on a Google search, the first thing they're going to see is your LinkedIn profile. You've kind of missed that opportunity to connect with emotionally. [12:57] JD: This is interesting. This is, and this should play out further in this debate. Steven's over here talking about a very measurable concept of winning new business. Right. Can I get $1 million in new revenue? Can I bring on this many clients where Jake's talking about, hey, building a brand, building an image, being an expert in your field. And Jake's solution will close more plans too, Right. Like when he goes on a point of sale, someone's going to look them up, they're going to hire them because of those things. But both very different approaches to the same type of thing. And so that's fine, but we'll see how this kind of plays out a little more. Stephen, instead of asking Jake about the drawbacks in social media, I'm going to ask you to be the negative guy. Tell us more about where you think social media falls short. I hear a lot of people out there talk about it being an echo chamber where it's just advisors talking to advisors or industry talking industry people talking to industry people. Expand on this for us. [13:59] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. So, you know, so where social media is going to fall short is if you're trying to market on things like TikTok or like Instagram or you're trying to build a following in that capacity. [14:11] JD: Right. [14:11] Stephen Wilkinson: It's compounding. So, like, you know, I have a, I have a Twitter account. I have zero followers. Okay. Now if I post a lot, I'm going to get my big followers one of these days. And over time, yeah, I'm going to start to get followers and build a critical mass. But that is the huge issue with social media is it takes forever to get to that critical mass and then followers. [14:33] Jake Rushton: I'm sorry, it's not about followers, though. That's not the point. [14:37] JD: If you know, if you don't have followers, then you're, you're not reaching anyone. That's a tree falling in the forest and nobody around. I mean, what's, what's happening? [14:45] Jake Rushton: It's search. People are searching, right? They're going to find your Twitter. And if there's nothing there, then, yeah, you're not. It doesn't mean they have to follow you. They can search. [14:53] Stephen Wilkinson: Are they searching 401ks and then I come up on Twitter? [14:57] Jake Rushton: No. What comes up when you search you is your website that you've created about cold calling. [15:01] Stephen Wilkinson: So, so my argument. So the only thing that matters in my mind when I'm talking about marketing is like, is the tip of the sword, right? So, so if they're searching me, then one of my cold callers probably set a meeting with them, right? So they're like, oh, I set a meeting with that Steve's consulting firm. Amazing. Now I'm going to search him. Well, in my mind, that's so much like reactive stuff that, yes, it's totally important, but not as important as me being able to go out and hunt. [15:30] JD: Yeah, well, it's a tough one. We'll move on to some other stuff here. But I feel like there's that same theme again of, like, someone who's trying to be very mathematical and, and I think there's a lot of value in that. And I mean, by Stephen being very mathematical and getting out there and like, changing the bottom line, how much revenue can I drive? And then Jake's over here thinking kind of bigger picture, kind of more creative, more artistic, if you will. Like, no, no, I'm looking long term to build a brand that will pay dividends down the line. I think they both have validity, but what we're hoping to do today is find out. I want you guys both to think about the audience listening in. I'm. I'm someone listening in. I'm trying to figure out where do I spend my time? Where do I spend my energy? So, Jake, let's talk about return on investment. Let's talk about efficiency and effectiveness. Tell us about the benefits of social media. You're reaching a wider audience, but why is this a better use of our time? [16:25] Jake Rushton: Because it takes 18 phone calls to hopefully get one person to connect with you. If you put that time into a video and learn the skills to put your own creative spin, your own voice on it, that will work for you forever. It will sit on YouTube forever. And someone down the road could find it, they could find it tomorrow, they could find it five years. That is not going, you're not getting any results from the 17 calls when no one picked up the phone. And that's the issue is you're, you're not connecting with them and it gives them the opportunity to get to know and like you and trust you. [16:54] JD: So it's this pure scale, it's the scale of the numbers that you're talking about. And again, you're saying it's not about followers, it could be about search engine optimization. And so I think that's a good insight. Like it's not. So maybe people should have some hope that they've only got 500 followers and when they make a video post, they get no likes. You're saying somehow there's still some value in that. But surely your goal would be for them to build their following and then to create content that would get engagement. Right? I mean, that's what you want for them in the end. [17:26] Jake Rushton: Yeah, you want them to join into your community, your world. Obviously that's, that's what you're trying to do. Even during the sales process, if you cold call and you got a meeting, you go in there, you want them to be completely connected with you. And as far as any question comes up, they're coming your way. Well, that's not the case with a lot of plan sponsors. That's, they reach out to me. I have people all the time, they call me first instead of calling their advisor. And that, that has happened clearly from just social media posting. It's built branding myself as 401, Jake as the guy that has the answer for them instead of trying to go back and forth and hopefully their advisor will pick up the phone because there's a lot of advisors that just, they ignore those calls. They don't want those calls. They don't want, they want to be a passive advisor, set up a plan and then not deal with it again. It's not transactional, it's very relationship. [18:12] JD: Steve is Jake the anomaly. He's built himself up a brand. I don't doubt that what he says is true, that people reach out to him because he's built himself up as almost a level of fame within the foreign K industry. Steve, our plan sponsors, our human resources people, chief financial officers, small business owners, are they scouring the Internet? Are they searching for their next foreign kid advisor? Are they on TikTok looking for a cool foreign K advisor that's got a cool new dance move or is that not a thing? [18:43] Stephen Wilkinson: Well, you know, I'm sure there's a, there's definitely, there's a plan. Sponsors out there looking for 401k advisors. I'm sure that's the case. The vast, vast majority of the clients that we have didn't really know they had a problem. We're dealing with an uneducated consumer base that needs a group decision to make a decision and it's not really relevant to their business, right? So a lot of these people, like they don't even know they have a problem and even when you present the problem to them they're like eh, not as important as maybe it could be. And so you, in my opinion, you have to have an outbound strategy. There's only like five ways to market to clients, right? Like you have outbound, you have like referral marketing, you have organic, you have paid ads, you have solicitor type agreements. Like I would argue that organic marketing, like Jake's saying, social media, it will get you business, but it's the most complicated and the most time consuming way to acquire clients. Now once it's built, it's built. But there's like better ways to get your business going if you are a, you know, an established firm. Sure, absolutely, absolutely. Why not check it out, right? Why not start diversifying your different ways to acquire clients? But I absolutely think that you need a solid way to acquire clients now. It doesn't need to be cold calling, it could be any type of cold marketing. But I feel like the cold marketing is something that's worked in our industry. It still works in our industry and it will always work in our industry. [20:20] JD: Jake, I know you feel this question before. Some people are intimidated by social media content and not just what camera to have, what microphone to have. And I know you help people with that both online and in some of your, your speaking gigs. But like what content to share, how to provide value to plan, sponsors and prospects that are looking in, like even me who kind of lives in this space, I could see how that's a difficult thing to wake up on a Monday morning and figure out what am I going to put out there? And then worse, what will the quality be like? Like will it be good? Will I be good at speaking or on camera? Or if I'm not speaking on camera and I'm writing a blog, am I good at that? Like I know you take this question all the time, but help us understand like Jake, we're going to suck at this and I'm afraid that what I'm going to put out there is going to hurt my brand, not help my brand. [21:14] Jake Rushton: No, I love that question because it goes back to what does content really mean and how does it apply to our business? So when I, when I think of the word content and a lot of people when I mentioned that name that word, they think just social media. But we're in a business that we're only selling content. That's literally all that we do. Right. Whether it's you're going through a Fi360 report, you're going through the plan document, that's all content. So you're not, you're not needing to come up with new content. You're doing it all day long. You're just not capturing it because you're doing it one by one. Just like cold calling, you're doing it one by one. You just have to figure a way to capture it, to share it with more people so they can see what you're doing and get a sense of how you can actually help them solve their problem. Maybe they don't know about it. Well, if they came across it because they're spending their time on social media, lucky you, like just like randomly getting someone to pick up the phone, they could randomly come across you in a social post. That's not necessarily what we're trying to do. I think of content as every part of your business, not just sales, but also inside of it. Could you be taking back that relationship from the record keeper to the advisor with the participants instead of just giving it away? Right. You can do that with content and that's what a video does. It gives you the chance to get them to know, like and trust you. And you're going to do two things. You're going to qualify them, they're going to want to listen to you because they're going to like how you actually presented it. And you're going to suck in the beginning and that's fine. And you're going to, you're going to push away the people that don't like you, right? I got a lot of people that don't like me. They hate how I do it. I would rather not deal with them or try to talk to them or waste my time trying to convince them of anything. I want them go somewhere else. That's totally cool because I don't need to have a million clients. You can build an amazing book of business with 20 to 30 of the right clients that like to be with you and want to be with you. You don't need to have this machine where you're just robo dialing all these people, hoping that you're going to get, you know, 15% of them, it doesn't make any sense. And the reason it's pushed most cases is because big firms don't trust you enough to build your personal brand. They're afraid of it because they think you're going to realize you don't need them anymore because you've got a personal brand that's bigger than theirs and you can go off on your own and keep all that extra profit for yourself. [23:14] JD: I, I think both of you face some of the same problems. First of all, I love your point on documenting what they do every day. So if that wasn't heard, well out there, Jake saying, look, if you're sitting with your team in your conference room and you're looking over Fi360 reports trying to figure out what fund to replace and, and remove, like, document that, like everything you do every day, document and put it out there. And then clients can kind of get an inside look into what you do as an advisor. And I think that that's phenomenal advice. I'm still stressing on the lack of audience. And so I want to kind of shift over to Steven's side of things of like, you know, actual getting things done and numbers and this that. But let me ask you, Stephen, Jake's all about showing your brand, like trying to show what your company is all about and how you do things. Is this lost in a cold call? The people that you create a script for that call for you is part of their goal to, to reflect the brand, to explain, like, why they should be taking a meeting with you and what good you all are doing. The same way Jake's trying to do that on the Internet. Can it be done in an email and a phone call? I guess is what I'm asking. [24:23] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. So that's a good question. So I would look at what Jake and I are doing as opposites in some ways, right? Like, like the people that are searching for a, you know, a 401k advisor, they've realized they have. Have a need. And so at that point, then they're watching, you know, whatever TikTok videos or, you know, whatever videos and they're at Jake or and his advisors are adding value and they're like, wow, maybe this guy can help me. He has proven that he is an expert, right? The issue from my perspective, on a cold calling perspective is that my prospects and they don't realize they have a problem. And so step one is to give them a call and Say, hey, look, there's a good chance you have a problem. And then once they are on the. Because, like, when I'm cold calling, the only goal of that cold call is to set a first meeting. And then in that first meeting, it's completely educational. Like, we're literally. We have a whole framework for a sales process. That first meeting is basically articulating, hey, you are paying fees. Hey, this is why the fees work the way they do. And you have no idea what you're paying. And then going through like, hey, you have a fiduciary obligation to not only understand what you're paying, but who you're paying and if it's competitive. And so our sales process is completely educational, where Jake is saying, post your educational stuff on, you know, social media. Teach the clients that you know something, but that requires someone to not only actively be searching, but then actively be able to find you somehow. And I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying, you know, cold calling is the same thing where you're actively reaching out to them, but you're going to hit the people that don't know they have the problem, which is the vast majority of the people out there. And then it runs through this kind of the same way where it's an educational process where you're articulating these different things to these prospective clients. And it's. That's what, that's my argument is that no one's in our office is calling and saying, buy, buy, buy kind of a thing. It's complete education. And we have a whole educational system behind the cold call, which is how our industry should sell. Right. We're consultants. We're here to add value. We. Yeah. [26:32] Jake Rushton: Why do it one at a time, though? That's my point. Like, why. Why would you only do it to one person at a time? And nobody likes to hear that they've got a problem, that they're the ones that made the problem. Right. [26:42] JD: I think, I think when they, I think, I think when that side of the argument says why one person at a time is because it's very measurable. You can, you can literally say, okay, I'm going to call 20 people today. I got a hold of this many. I was able to give my pitch. This many where when we floated out on LinkedIn or Instagram, it's very difficult to understand, like, how the needle is moving, you know, and like you said, it's, it's many times it's not about likes and comments because those end up being echo Chamber stuff anyways. And so that's. That would be my answer to you. The why is because it's measurable. I can literally wrap my brain around it and know that if I follow this pattern, something will work. Where I think it would behoove you, Jake, to let everyone know, like, hey, there's a similar pattern in social. Like if you follow it, you'll get the result. But. But it's harder to quantify I feel like is why we ask you that. That's why we're concerned. [27:36] Jake Rushton: No, I agree. I mean brand is something that's not very easy to measure but yet we all fall for it. We all have brands that we're very loyal to and we would go there and spend more for. Right. And that goes back to, you know, just building that brand and trusting yourself in really committing long term to what you believe and what you're going to help people do instead of being so transactional and trying to get move on to the next plan. The next plan. Which is why we don't have such a great brand as a whole industry. Right. We haven't done a great job. We don't have high account balances, we have retirees that don't have enough money. It's not going well. And now we're pushing secure 2.0, trying to force everybody we can to get in there without having to do anything. Maybe we should do a better job of branding that we're going to bring you better results by actually bringing better results. [28:22] JD: I love the idea of branding our industry better. I will go boomer here for a moment though. And my father and granted this is a company started in 1975, I don't think we had a brand. You know, and I know when I was early on in my business and I know times are changing, we didn't have a brand. But we went out, we rolled up our sleeves and we won new business through simply being a third party administrator that did a skill. I don't think people hired us because of our brand or this or that. It was really more about an opportunity when we knocked on the door and got in and we closed the case. And I still think that that probably drives 80% of business today. I don't think people are hiring people solely based on brand. I think there's a lot of merit to right time, right place. Now maybe I'm being negative on that, but we get a lot of talk about brand and there's been people in the chat bar, they're saying, oh, plan design consultants because of retireholics for sure. Our own efforts on social media have boosted our business and in a big way. Like, we do massive sales compared to what we did now. Can I, can I make that all attuned to retireholics? Probably not. Obviously. Chad, Justin, Mark, Devin worked very hard at what they're doing. But, yes, social media has helped us, but guess what? We've worked our ass off on this shit for eight years. [29:50] Jake Rushton: We had a combination. You've done all of it. [29:53] JD: Thousands of dollars, so many hours. I can't necessarily say that it's been ROI effective and I'll drink for that. So I don't know that to be the case. I will also say not to pat ourselves on the back, but we're kind of an exception to the rule. Like, we're one. What would you tell every other TPA out there to do the same thing we did? I'm not so certain that that would be the right advice. I want to ask you. [30:18] Stephen Wilkinson: Just go ahead, please, and, and that's, that's my point, is that you're eight years and thousands of dollars in. It's a compounding thing. Social media from an organic perspective is compounding, which is great, right? It starts really small and then at some point you'll hit critical mass. But who knows when that is? And then you have to think, if you're an advisor, there's a sales cycle, a mean sales cycle involved. That's the problem with organic marketing. I'm, I'm all for it if you have tons of capacity and, you know, time and the ability to build out an amazing, you know, organic approach. Yeah, but you're gonna, you could starve by the time it actually, you actually see fish, you know, from it. [30:59] JD: And then let's talk about the sales cycle. I think that's a good one and not one that I had in my notes, but I, I think, Jake, I saw you recently post that you had reopened up a prospect of yours after a lot of time had gone by. So I think everyone listening in should understand that, whether on social media or in cold calling for 1k just to remind everyone, you're all experts out there. You should know. But it's a long sales cycle, right? Like, you could put content out and meet someone from 18 months ago and close the deal today. That, like, that's not uncommon. [31:35] Jake Rushton: Yeah, no, it takes forever. And one way to shorten that is for them to get to know, like, and trust you while you're at home watching Netflix. They're like, I did this myself with retireholics. When I came across you the first time, I binge watched tons of videos, got to know the whole team. I felt like when we first met JD that we were each other. Yeah, right. Like that's the kind of impact content will make. But you'll never have any if you don't just start. Right? It's a combination. You need all of it. It's not that you can't reach out to people, but don't make it so cold, reach out to them a little bit warmer on a platform where they are, where they are putting time, where they're maybe they're making content like there's a whole engagement back end that people are forgetting. That seems like a lot of work. But yeah, don't just be the lurker because you're not getting followers. You're just going to sit back and hope they come follow you. Go follow them, go make comments on their stuff and don't try to make a sale on LinkedIn. That's not going to be the case. And each platform has a different context, a different way that you're going to present something. And definitely it's the attention is going to shift around. Right. Tick Tock is not a dancing app. I learned. I go to Tick Tock. I'm looking for a good attorney for something I'm working on. And I went to TikTok first and I got to know like, and trust a lot of different attorneys way better than some aggregator website that gives me a paragraph about what they've done. [32:49] JD: Don't work too hard on Tick Tock because I think the government's going to strip it away from us. [32:53] Jake Rushton: But yeah, that's a whole discuss. [32:56] JD: I think I just back up one more time and I hope this doesn't sound too negative. I want to be honest, I want to be very truthful. My personal brand on LinkedIn, which I used to cultivate a lot these days, I just put out retireholic stuff for the week, just reminding people. But there was a time for me to get to 15,000 followers and make social media thing for me one more time. I just want to let everyone know. Took a lot of fucking effort like I had. I said this can sound really cheesy, but I set goals for myself every week to expand my followers to do what Jake is talking, talking about, to like, to comment, to engage. I spent so much time on LinkedIn to get to where I got. And again, I don't know, you could. I could look back now and say, well worth it, but I just don't Know if it's the path for everybody. Stephen, let me ask you about technology. Can you use technology to become a more efficient cold caller today than you would have been 10 years ago? I mean, surely you are strategically making these outbound dials and maybe do the callers have some type of intel when they're calling in? Like, tell me, tell me how you leverage technology, if at all. [34:04] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. You know, the only thing that we leverage technology. Yeah. And maybe this is a talking point for Jake, but we haven't really used technology. Our cold calling isn't massively different than it was when I was cold calling 10 years ago. [34:19] JD: It's a straight up list and you dial. [34:22] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. The only difference is now we have feeds from the Department of Labor website into our salesforce and then from there our CRM is legit and it's going to, like, change the world. Yeah. It's tech because it's going to allow us to track not only a lot of things, but now we're starting to build a database of warm leads. It's the strategy that's changed. It's the strategy around cold calling. This first few months has been me trying to figure out how to, like, outsource cold calling in a real way to, you know, other people. What I've kind of found is that if the. If your firm is going to have a cold caller, it should be in this, this process. Step one, someone on your team should acquire the skill of cold calling and communicating the plan sponsor prospects, the people under you. In my opinion, at least my thesis, where I'm at today, which has been changing, is you should have. The caller shouldn't be trying to set the meetings, they should be filtering them and then having like, the closer, the senior caller set the meetings. That's where I think you're going to see my meetings explode because I've switched strategies. [35:28] Jake Rushton: Is this like. [35:29] JD: I'm sorry, is this like a handoff? Is that what you're talking about? Almost like you've got a fish on the line, you're going to hand the poll to someone else. [35:35] Stephen Wilkinson: Basically, yeah. So that. So my callers are setting. So I remember when I was growing up calling, I would set one to two meetings a day, calling all day, like literally all day, stopping only to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And these callers, when they're setting the meetings by themselves, they set, you know, One meeting every 18 hours is basically how it's working out when I have them filter the leads. Now we're setting a meeting every seven hours, basically. And so that makes sense when you get the, when you, when you look at the people I'm hiring to set these, these calls because they're like basically moms, right? They, they can't talk about something crazy that the clan sponsor throws out at them. And there's going to be of conviction. Like I'm way convicted that if I get someone on the line that we can, there's a high probability we can help them. Right. That conviction comes through on the phone. And so that's basically how it's working out. And you're starting to already see that in the last couple weeks because I've kind of switched strategies right now. I have. Yeah. [36:35] JD: On the one hand I. That seems very inspiring and valuable to me, like the kind of handoff. On the other hand, we all know cold calling has this like, image, right, of like very salesy, very kind of intrusive. And so the, the handoff to someone who's better at closing the deal almost sounds kind of gross to me. But if it's passion and heart driven, then I get it. And so that, that's a fine balance. I got more questions for you on tech, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna send it over to Jake side. I know with social media you can like schedule your calendar of posts, right? You can like set up an inventory of. I want to do an Instagram on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I want to put this on LinkedIn on these days. Like there's tech that allow you to kind of schedule your social media. Obviously there's tech as it relates to cameras and, and good audio and editing and stuff like that. But tell us why. Give us, give us some insights on what, what's happening on the tech space for social media and why that should be encouraging to us if we wanted to get into it. [37:37] Jake Rushton: Well, I think it's never been easier for you to compete with big brands that have been around for years and years. [37:42] JD: Right. [37:42] Jake Rushton: And I think people want authenticity, which means you don't need to have a bunch of fancy editing, a bunch of really expensive equipment. You can literally do just a face. Your phone is everything you need. And I think that's the opportunity. Now is that because the market has shifted away from canned advertising or commercial. They just want to see what you're up to. They just want to like make sure that they get to know you and the further they can see into your world. I mean, think about people you follow not even in 4.1k that how cool it is when they do really authentic posts or they're doing a live and it's like you're, you feel like you're there with them and they're reaching thousands of people at that time. We don't necessarily have that because 401k is not necessarily many people's top of their list of excitement outside the industry. Right. But when you start to get into a niche and where you focus on a certain industry and you can start to get involved in some of those other kind of communities, that's where you can add value because you're going to understand their world and not just be over here talking 401k. Because they don't. Most plan sponsors don't really want to know. They want to hire you to take care of it. So they just want to make sure they like you emotionally and then they're going to back up the decision to hire you because you know your stuff. So you kind of need both. But the best part about the technology again is just your phone is all you need. It's just a matter of getting it out, getting consistent. Because if you make three podcasts and then you give up, you don't, it doesn't help you, it hurts you. Or if you're posting canned content and I saw a new, you know, new post about the whole chat GPT getting thrown into this other product, I'm not going to mention it, where it's making your actual text for your post with the canned content article. I mean, that's horrible. Horrible, right? [39:23] JD: Oh no, I'm loving that, Jake. That sounds awesome. [39:27] Jake Rushton: It's. But it's gonna sell because advisors, we're lazy. We want the quick, easy button. We think, well, this is going to check mark the box of doing content, but it has nothing to do with you or your original. [39:36] Stephen Wilkinson: Maybe. [39:37] JD: Yeah, but maybe the chat GPT version of you will be cooler than the real one. Not you personally, but someone out there. Let's give a thought. Stephen, go ahead. [39:44] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah, actually I was, I was gonna say, I wouldn't say advisors are lazy. They're just not focused like we, we need to control not our time, but our attention. And I think doing less things but more important impactful things in your business is going to be the, the key. And just, you know, I'd say if you're a new advisor, they, they should be picking one way to market and knowing all, every going all in. That would be my interesting. My thoughts. Yeah. [40:10] Jake Rushton: If you're brand new, you should definitely be building your personal brand and start from scratch. It does not take long. I mean I didn't start making content until really heavily until 2020. Like I started a little before that, but it was like one post a week. It does not take long to build a really strong brand in this industry. And sure you can cold call. I mean that's like saying you should just have an hsa. That's the only thing you need for retirement. It's a better plan than the 401k. It's better tax strategy. But like that's not the case. You need multiple pieces to actually retire one day. And we don't have one solution that will cover all of it. [40:42] Stephen Wilkinson: Well, I'd argue that one post a week probably won't build a good brand. Like it's just going to be like, you know, maybe when I started, like I'd be like, hey, I'm going to work 60, 80 hours a week. I'm not going to be a memory. And you know, why not throw everything at it? But like, you know, some people don't want to work like that. And I would say you should go all in and deep on like pick, pick one thing if you're just starting out and double down on it because then, because referral. I don't count referral marketing. There's been some comments on referral marketing as a way to acquire clients. If you're getting referrals, there's something else going on. Like you have a cross sale in some capacity. [41:18] JD: Well, don't forget you, a lot of us don't ask for referrals and many times we don't ask for them the right way. So there can be efforts there. I think you're both right. There's some logic to what you're saying there, Stephen, in terms of going all in because you're going to be a lot better at it. But I will tell everyone out there listening in, whether you're going all in or doing both, or using some of these other alternatives that we've mentioned briefly, most advisors don't want enough time for this area, like let's call it marketing. Most advisors don't spend enough time on it. They're busy waking up Monday morning, answering emails from clients, answering phone calls from clients, prepping for the next client meeting and not putting enough energy and effort into this marketing and think that that's something everyone needs to think about. A good responsible business that wants to grow has to allocate a decent chunk of time to marketing and sales and getting out there and doing those things. And a lot of advisors struggle in that space. [42:12] Jake Rushton: And so let's talk about Referrals for a sec. Because what's the first thing the referral is going to do when that either a benefit broker or CPA attorney, whoever is actually referring you into the business, where's that person that received that referral? Your name? What are they going to do? Right. They're gonna go look you up, and if they see nothing, there's no credibility there. You don't exist. Right. And there's many advisors that I can't find any content on, and it would not take you very long. And that's where I think we need to wake up. When it talks, when you talk about YouTube and who owns YouTube is Google. And the more content you can get on YouTube, the more likely someone is gonna pull that up. [42:49] JD: Is it possible, Jake, though, that you're slightly myopic in this, which is good, cause it's your passion. But I would argue that there are plenty of plan sponsors out there that will hire Joe Smith or Tina Smith, financial advisor, to be a 401k advisor on their plan. If they go on the Internet and come up blank, you know, the only thing they got is tinasmithadvisors.com and they go to the website just because there's no LinkedIn presence, just because there's no YouTube videos, just because there's no Twitter. Heck, there's some of them that would say, God bless this person. Like, I know that they're going to work hard on my plan and do their job. I don't. I know this is your passion and what's your. And what you're all about, but I don't think it moves the needle quite as much as you think it does. Although I'd love for some, you know, some stats to back that up. I know. [43:39] Jake Rushton: What are we doing in these, these finalists means what. What are we trying to accomplish in that one hour? You get to pitch them about your firm. Why are you staying up late trying to make a new PowerPoint? What are you trying to do then? [43:50] JD: You're trying to impress them in that 45 to 60 minutes and let them know you know what's going on. But I don't think that your Twitter is going to do that. I think it's the words that you use in that 45 to 60 minutes. That's what I, I think most of the time. I don't think you're going to walk in that room and they're going to go, oh, this is the guy from YouTube. [44:09] Jake Rushton: Like, let's hire that exact scenario. [44:12] JD: You're right. You're probably Right. [44:13] Jake Rushton: So you'll never know if you don't do anything. And you might. Yeah, I think that's definitely the smaller number of people that wouldn't look you up. If I'm about to make a big decision where either it's my company or I have to report to my boss and tell them why I decided to go with this firm, I'm going to do more research than just the one hour sitting there listening to them giving you their best pitch. Same thing when you're hiring somebody. You're not just going to look at the resume and not look them up. You're going to look them up. That's what I mean. It's changed in the last 16 years. Now you can, you're gonna look them up. [44:42] JD: But as long as I don't see that they were in front of a judge to go to jail last week, if I see nothing, I'm going to be okay with that. I'm open minded to hear what they're going to say. Steve, there's this positive. Can you have a positive stigma? Let me see. Cold callers are sometimes applauded for their hard work ethic. Right. You still, in this day, it's like, well, that guy's a hard worker or that girl's a hard worker, she's gonna bang, bang, bang and make these calls. Do you feel that way? Are you a go getter because you take this approach and Jake and the social media people are just kind of not willing to go the hard yard that you are? [45:19] Stephen Wilkinson: No, I'd say that. You know, when I, when I first started at Merrill lynch, my dad was like, Steve, if you want to be successful, you have to work 60 hours a week. So I did. And there were days I didn't have anything to do, so I'd sit at my office and in my desk and read because I was like, I have to work at least 60 hours a week to be successful. Right. And so I don't think that it's all about, you know, are you measuring the right thing in your business? And you know, and if you're just starting out, it needs to be a linear type activity. I, I just see the problem. I don't, I'm not hating on organic type marketing. I'm just saying that, like, it's going to take so long to build that critical mass that it's like, if you're an established advisor and you don't need it, yeah, organic marketing, why not? Right? Take the time, build it to critical mass, why not? But the, the issue is going to be that you're just going to starve. If you're trying to rely 100% on social media marketing and you don't have a business already already in place, I feel like you have to kind of cut your teeth and you have to do linear type activities. And it's funny because I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you guys knew of Pension Assurance started by John Russin. Great guy, great firm. You know they do a great job. [46:35] JD: This is where you buy the leads, right? [46:37] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah. Pension Assurance, the CPA auditing firm. [46:40] JD: Oh, sorry, sorry. [46:41] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah, John Russin, he started the firm and you know how he didn't want to take any of his clients. He did it the right way. You know how he started sending out postcards. He mailed out postcards. Direct marketing built the firm, then started getting referrals. [46:59] JD: We still to this day hear from some top notch advisors, some of them in, in Jake's firm in SRP that still to this point will walk up to a desk, you know, a reception desk and, and hand off a bag of coffee and a business card and, and come back a month later to. So that still exists even by some top people. Jake, you had thought. [47:22] Jake Rushton: Yeah, no, I'm not with SRP anymore. Just want to. [47:24] Stephen Wilkinson: Oh, sorry, [47:27] JD: good point. Negative 10 points for me. [47:31] Jake Rushton: No, you're right. All those things work. I mean a billboard could work. You could, I mean the best thing possible could be spend $7 million on a super bowl commercial because you get the most eyeballs ever on it. But that's crazy expensive. So the point is what can you do? What should you spit that seven hours of phone calls, should you do that or should you do learn some skills to communicate more effectively with video. So what if I, what if I [47:53] JD: told you, what if I told you I thought you both were wrong and that if an advisor came to me, and this is the honest truth, if advisor came to me and, or Chad Justin, our team mark and said hey, what should I do? Like how do, how do good advisors win new business? My answer would have been, I'm sure plenty can guess would have been strategic partnerships. So I would have said look, spend all your time. Kind of like to Jake's point of fishing with a net, I would have said look, I don't need you to focus on specific prospects, that's great but go out and find CPAs, go out and find group health shops, go out and find, you know, wealth management firms that, that you can go and tell your story to them and that where their clients venn diagram with your prospects and then that's the best way because I've seen that work over the decades very, very well. Is that, is that crazy talk? Does that make sense? How would you respond to that, Stephen? Let's go. Stephen first. [48:48] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. J.D. i would, I would agree if the advisor has a big book of business already, I would disagree if they're brand new. And the reason why is jd, let's say I meet with you and I meet with Jake. You guys, both you guys are referral source and I'm newer and I'm like, hey guys, let's do some referral marketing. Right? I'm sure you guys have been to those lunches and then you leave and nothing happens. Right. There's nothing really compelling. If I'm new, the question on your side is, can he service my clients? And so if you're going to do that type of referral marketing, I would be marketing to all of my clients. Center of influence. So like I would be saying, hey, I just, I just acquired a client. Right. Where are their centers of influence? Insurance brokers, CPAs. And then meeting with them. [49:35] JD: Okay, good. Same strategy. You're getting those negatives by using acronyms, by the way. But same strategy. Yeah. Try to kind of fish with a net instead of a pole. But, but I hear what you're saying because you're a rookie. You're. It's kind of like, how dare you? Like, what are you going to do to service my clients? Why would I let you in without more experience? Again, so then that you've made that point tonight several times. And I don't think anyone can argue with that. Stephen is as a, as a beginner, as a rookie, there's a lot less roadblocks in the cold calling than there are in other ways because you just don't have the experience yet. But Jake. So if I told you, Jake, social media, Jesus, man. It's a lot of time and energy and effort. I'd much rather advise or spend it on these strategic partners. How do you respond to me? [50:20] Jake Rushton: I mean, even on top of that, if you're starting new, is that what you mean? Or just any. [50:24] JD: Anybody like anybody. I mean, you can add that nuance, but anybody? [50:29] Jake Rushton: Yeah. No, I think the key there is to align yourself with the right strategic partners that you kind of maybe niche down on a certain kind of industry. You know, whenever I meet an advisor, I talk to them about, ask them who their target client is, and they always tell me a size of a plan that's not necessarily the right niche I'm talking about you need to narrow it down. So you need to find those other benefit brokers, CPAs, attorneys. Even though for me, I've been working with a lot of different advisors that have come to me because I'm not taking individual clients, which makes me kind of a weird, nuanced advisor. But they don't want to do 401ks, but they want the attention of all the participants to do individual business. So they've aligned with me and they found me on social media and they've reached out to me. We've been meeting and talking through how can we help them and not just me, but the whole club to come in there and to actually provide help with the 401k where they take the one piece of the fiduciary responsibility for participant outcomes. Because everything we do follows Josh. It shows our X formula, right? Fiduciary formula. And I just plug them into that participant part. So bringing value to strategic partners first is the key to that. I started my career at a benefit shop. I get it. It failed multiple times before I got there because it was like a partnership that was very one way. The advisor would just try to cherry pick the benefit broker's largest client. That doesn't work. You're going to have to take on some startups sometimes you don't want to do some headaches because they're a great client of theirs. And as long as you're ready to overcome that hurdle and put in the work and be okay with that, then you're going to see some great benefits down the road. [52:01] JD: But don't forget, don't forget everyone out there, even those strategic partnerships, kind of, to Steven's point earlier, are not things you can just have one meeting and be done. Those are relationships that take, unfortunately, time, energy, effort. Reconnecting like that. There's no, there's no, like, there's no cheat code here. Right? Like, all three of these options are going to take some legwork, you know, and some rolling up the sleeves and some hard work. [52:28] Jake Rushton: Can I add to this? If you're a new advisor, the concept there, if you're documenting your process of becoming a 4.1k advisor and sharing that with the world on social media, you're. It's going to be a good thing. It'll benefit you. It'll hold you more accountable. People. Actually, I've noticed early in my career, and I remember one of my first plans, the. The plan sponsor called me. It was like, right for Christmas, they called me and he was super pumped to tell me, hey, we picked you. And he knew I was brand new, but he was excited to hire me because he knew I was going to work my, like, really hard for him. And like, so sharing that, not hiding and not trying to, you know, present some big front that you're some big advisor when you're not, just be like candid and authentic. [53:10] JD: Jake, I used to say the exact same thing to the more beginner advisors. And then I would, I will add your point. I would say, hey, leverage us as the TPA. We've been in business coming up on 50 years, so that will add to your clout. Right. This is my partner, so when it comes to your IRS stuff, I'll drink your, your 5,000, five hundreds. You're testing all this serious legal stuff. It's this firm right here, my partner that's going to handle that. When it comes to the custodian, your record keeping, I'm going to be using Voya or Principal or whomever. They're a big established company. What you get in me as the rookie advisor is to Jake's point, is someone who's new, who's hungry, who doesn't have a lot of clients and is willing to put in the hard work to service you and support you, and that can work really well. That's a great way to overcome that kind of inexperience and kind of flip it upside down. Right. All right, it's this our last kind of wrap up here. I. There's a. I feel like we're still in this kind of messy spot. Right? Like, do I do a little bit of both? Do I go all in on one? Like, like Stephen said. So final quick thoughts here from the bottom of your heart. If you wanted to be the most effective, most efficient financial advisor and your goal over the next 12 months was to bring on X amount of plans, Steven, you're sticking with cold calling. That's the way to go. [54:33] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah, I don't want to be the cold calling guy. I wish I had a better, easier way to grow a practice. Like, I wish I had a silver bullet. I think at the end of the day, you have to go into it wanting to work. There is no good way around it. I would say if you're a new advisor, you have, you have to do linear activities because you don't have the time for compounding activities. [54:54] JD: Like, gotta make some money. [54:55] Stephen Wilkinson: Yeah. It has to be, it has to be time. Your time times something. Right. Like a formula. Organic marketing is great. It's compounding so, like, it's. It's going to work. You just got to have the time for critical mass. And if you don't need the money, cool. [55:11] JD: Yeah. [55:11] Stephen Wilkinson: Do do compounding. Compounding marketing. [55:15] JD: And Jake, same question to you. You're sticking with the social media, the content creation, the personal brand. That's the way to win new business. [55:27] Jake Rushton: I would 100% tell you you need to learn the skills to document and share what you actually can do. The value bring. Learning how to make content both inside your business and outside. Trying to outsource any part of that is going to take away the creative piece. So it's not that difficult. We learn really way harder stuff in our industry than how to edit on your phone for 10 minutes. So learn how to communicate effectively using videos so you can reach more than one person at a time. [55:55] JD: Okay, fair enough. Let's. It is final Jeopardy moment, Webby. The final Jeopardy moment is y' all out there are gonna vote on the winner of this debate. I believe your vote should be for the person did Jake make his point or did Stephen make his point? Not where you sit in the camp of social media versus cold calling. So what I'd like you to vote for is who. Who did a better job explaining their passion today, even if you disagree with them. So, Brandon, throw it up there. And the final points will be allotted for the you out there in the chat bar voting. Here we go. The votes are coming in. [56:32] Stephen Wilkinson: Good luck, Jake. [56:33] JD: I'm sure I wish you good luck. I'm sure I owe a few. [56:37] Jake Rushton: We're still gonna hang out, right? We gotta go. [56:41] JD: No. [56:42] Stephen Wilkinson: No matter who wins, we're still cool. All right. [56:44] Jake Rushton: All right. Well, you guys are pretty much called Steve many times. I didn't tell him I was calling. I just straight called him. [56:53] JD: You guys are pretty much neck and neck on the the score, and that's just dumbass JD Throwing some points at you here and there, keeping it close. So it's really up to the audience. And the audience with most of the votes in has Steve winning at 77% to Jake at 23. So. Wow. Cold calling. Can you cold calling. And Steve wins the debate today. I'm sure this is going to be an ongoing bout, and you both will continue to work hard at what you believe in. And God bless you for it, both of you. I should say that, Steve, you're out there transparently showing us the numbers you're bringing in and what you're doing, and very articulate as you describe it. And so. So we can all kind of learn from your, from your journey, which I think is very, very cool. So thank you for that. And Jake, you spend every day of your life helping us try to understand social media more. And you're continuing to evolve with that and do different things. And so you're, you've built up such a big personal brand for yourself. And I'm sure the whole industry really appreciates you for all that. So keep digging in and keep doing that stuff. We thank you for it and everyone who tuned in on a Wednesday at 11 Appreciate y'. [58:07] Stephen Wilkinson: All. [58:08] JD: My Bailey's with my coffee was good. These two guys, I'm sure have finished their cherry Coke and their Arizona iced tea or whatever the hell it is they're drinking. [58:15] Stephen Wilkinson: Inflation protected $0.99. [58:18] JD: Thank you to everyone. 400k industry. We love y'. All. Tomorrow night, Thursday, same Bat Channel, same bat time. And we'll be getting hammered as special guest, Kelly Mann. We'll see on Retireholics tomorrow night. Thanks you guys for taking part in this debate. And have a great day, everybody. See you later. [58:37] Jake Rushton: Thanks, J.D. thanks, everybody. Thanks, Brandon.