Welcome back to the 118th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Jared Reynolds. Jared is a partner in Wilkerson & Reynolds, an advisory firm in Columbia, Missouri that oversees nearly $160 million in assets under management, with a heavy focus in working with small business owners and their 401(k) plans.
What’s unique about Jared, though, is the way that he’s grown his business with small business owners by forming a niche in working with bass fishermen, for whom he organizes fishing and hunting trip expeditions, and gets an opportunity to spend hours or even days at a time in close proximity with small business owners to form relationship and then, eventually, share a little bit more about what he does for his clients.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Jared formed his niche with bass fishermen, in what started out as a family connection through his father into the bass fishing community. And then, morphed into attending bass fishing trade shows and tournaments. And then, developing an expertise in working with bass fishing tournament winners on tax strategies for their prize winnings and how to negotiate their endorsement deals and TV contracts.
And, ultimately, evolved beyond just working with competitive bass fishing professionals and into those who engage in bass fishing as a luxury sport, many of whom are also very successful small business owners. We also talk about how, exactly, Jared was able to turn his hobby and passion into an actual prospecting activity. The way he organizes fishing and hunting trips with prospects is an opportunity to form new relationships.
While he has a firm policy of not branding his advisory firm as part of the expeditions, to downplay his own background as a financial advisor, and allow the conversation of how he can help prospective small business owners to occur more organically. How he’s found that more extreme marketing activities actually tend to develop the best prospects. And his advice on how any advisor can turn their own hobby into a passion prospecting strategy to attract their own clients.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Jared talks about the hockey stick of growth that emerges as you focus into a niche. How it often takes three years to really get established with a specialty, but the way it compounds exponentially further after 10 or more years, to the point that Jared’s biggest regret is that he didn’t focus even earlier on just trying to do business with, as he puts it, his people, the fishermen and hunters that he enjoys working with the most anyways.
