The Best Year of My Career: How Keeping a Pulse on the Community Has Built My Business During Covid

Editor’s note: In this edition of What’s Working Now, an AdvisorRADIO feature in which Horsesmouth members tell us about recent success they have had running and growing their businesses, we hear from advisor Joe LaTour, who is having his best year ever with T.V. and radio ads directed at his community.

The following article includes edited excerpts of this conversation, or you can watch the full interview below.

Speaking directly to those affected by Covid in the community

We’re having the best year of my career! Even during the pandemic, I continue to do what we’ve been doing, which is T.V. advertising and radio advertising. We’ve had our finger on the pulse of our local community. We’ve gotten a lot of clients from Mercy Healthcare Systems, where 7,000 people were laid off.

We spoke right to that with a 30-second T.V. ad saying, “My heart goes out to the Mercy employees that are losing their job because of this pandemic. We have a lot of Mercy clients. We understand your frozen pension. We understand your 403(b) and your 401(k). And we have a lot of you bringing your severance letters to us. We can help. I know you don’t know what to do. You’re good at what you do, but you don’t know what to do with this. Come and see me.”

And man, we have had an influx. I’ve gotten more appointments than ever. Mercy Hospital was the only one that I’ve spoken to directly, but I’ve also put out a general ad where I said, “Many people are hurting because of the pandemic.

A lot of employers are not able to continue to match contributions of employees into the 401(k)s. And many people don’t realize that if you’re 59½ and you’re not getting a matching contribution, you can actually roll that 401(k) into an IRA without triggering a taxable event. And you possibly have more options available outside of the walls of that 401(k) and would benefit from professional management as well. Call me.” That kind of thing.

Every day, we have people calling in, one to two people, making appointments. And these are people that are coming, unlike from Social Security workshops, bringing their statements. They’re ready to talk about their 401(k). And whereas with Social Security, we’re going to help everybody that comes, but some people just want help with Social Security. Either they don’t have significant retirement assets, or they’re happy where they’re at.

So we’re getting more appointments from the television and the radio than we did during our workshops. And we were killing it with our workshops. For about the past month, we are beyond where we ended last year—and last year was a record year.

Surviving Covid, building trust

This despite the fact that I was in the hospital with Covid for six days. I got a really bad case of it. Double pneumonia, fever in excess of 105. I’m thankful to have made it through, and I’ve been out of the hospital for five weeks now. Seven of my 10 employees got it. I got it the worst, but we’re all back at work now. And none of our clients got it as a result of the guidelines that we’ve been adhering to.

In spite of that, we’ve done well. The T.V. station wanted to interview me about the Trump payroll tax cut. And the guy that was interviewing me started talking about Covid at the end of the interview, but I didn’t realize the camera was still going.

At the end of it, he said, “Joe, the T.V. station is going to be doing a piece on Covid, can I use what you said? I’ve had the camera on.” I’m like, “Oh, free air time.”

But you know, what I noticed was that it actually endeared us to the viewing audience. Sometimes people need to see your humanity and be able to relate it to their pain. I had a lot of people thanking me for that interview. Staying out in front of your demographic is important. Keeping your face out there and being sincere and not being salesy, but genuinely caring.

We did some other ads too, saying, “Has your advisor gone radio silent? If that’s the case, then listen, we’re here to help you. We want you to stay safe. We want you to stay healthy. We don’t want you to panic during this time. The economy was doing great. This is a bump in the road and when this is out of the way, it will bounce back, which is to be true.” And just being out there, being a calming voice and staying in front of people during this time, again, I think lent to our credibility in the eyes of the viewing public. And I think that’s important.

Plugging into local needs

There are some people that I watch on T.V. commercials which definitely helps me make up my mind that I don’t want to do business with that person, because they’re very salesy.

But I mean, people need help. They need what we do. They don’t know what they’re doing. You have 30 seconds to sell yourself as far as your sincerity, your care, your compassion, and your professional knowledge that you bring to the table.

We need to be plugged in to the needs of our local community. We had a police officer run over by a car and injured in his spinal cord. He’s now a paralyzed young guy with a family and children. We went on T.V. to represent him and to speak about how to donate to his situation.

Don’t just be on there to talk about the professional services that you offer, but also be involved in your community in a way that is helpful. And to be able to financially donate into areas of need. We do things like “LaTour Gives Back” where we partner with a radio station and take applications for people that are in need for circumstances beyond their control, then pay their mortgage for a year.

T.V. stations gravitate to the human interest side of that. Again, so they see that you are involved, that you do care, and that you’re not afraid to put some skin in the game to help people.

Genuinely caring for the community

People also know us because we have done these Social Security workshops for years. There is a good amount of people that have been referred to the workshops, because it’s nothing but pure information. And it’s helped people.

People are sent to us by others that have come even if they have not done business. But they’ll send somebody who will come in with $3 million. Because you take care of people, you don’t put a price tag on it. “I’m going to take care of you even if you have nothing.”

They come and they say, “Joe, I’m probably wasting your time because I don’t have any retirement assets.” I said, “You’re not wasting my time. I promised you in the workshop that I would help you with your Social Security. I’m not going to do a bait and switch. I’m here to help you. How can I help?”

The power of being a media presence

I would just say a rough estimate of my radio and T.V. spots, including producing, is going to be in excess of $100,000 a year. It’s not cheap, but, I mean, we’re probably going to end up doing a couple of million in revenue out of Springfield, Missouri, which is not too bad.

We even do Smart Advisor leads, which are really good. When we call these people and tell them who we are, they say, “Yes, I was hoping you would call. I was hoping you would call because I’ve been hearing you.”

Or when you walk into Sam’s Club or into Walmart or something, I hear people calling my name. I don’t know who they are, but they know who I am because I’m in their living room a few times a week.

My take on online client meetings

At the beginning of this pandemic, we did a lot of Zoom meetings with people and we made some clients doing it, but now it seems like people are not afraid to come on in. Springfield has a mask mandate that we honor. And I believe in the threat of Covid, especially since I’ve had it. I try to bring some calm by telling them, “Look, I’m probably the safest person you can be around. I tested positive and I’m chock full of antibodies.” Most of our meetings are in-person now.

But I didn’t have any trouble with virtual meetings. I mean, basically we’re face-to-face. So to me it’s no different, if people can see you.

Make sure that you lay a good foundation to get yourself known in your community either by radio or T.V. or whatever, because that makes the virtual appointment or the in-person appointment almost like a second appointment. They feel like they already know you. So you’re not having to do a lot of warm-up.

You can dive right into the things that matter to them because they’ve already been listening to you day in, day out, you’ve been around. Not over-saturating because then you’re the thing getting between them and their favorite T.V. show, if you’re on there too much. A couple of times a week, maybe, is sufficient. And at a key point when there’s the evening news or something like that.

My advice on doing T.V. and radio

To those who are wondering if they should get into T.V. and radio, I would say, “Look at your marketing budget.” Whatever you can afford, get together with your local radio station, your local T.V. station, the one that’s viewed the most and whatever you can budget, get yourself in front of your community and market what you do.

Budget what you can afford. Give it a year. Then don’t overstretch yourself financially. Make sure that you can budget it for a year. If you can’t do it for a year, don’t do it. Don’t waste your money.

Present yourself as a professional, not a salesman, providing solutions for people. I think that that is so key. Then, as you’re able, increase that. It does give you celebrity status in the eyes of the public. Even though my wife continually lets me know I’m not a celebrity, but nevertheless they don’t know that.

You have something to give and you provide a service. Yes, we get paid handsomely for it, but it is a service that is needed. And with 10,000-12,000 people a day aging in as baby boomers, man, they need somebody dependable. They don’t need a used-car salesman waiting to meet them at the door.

Offer more than the advisor next door

They need a professional that’s been trained, that knows the nuances of Social Security, that knows Medicare, that knows about taxes, and that can help them convert from traditional to Roth IRA, that can sit down with a tax professional and put together a tax plan. Because not only helping the clients with the volatility of the market, the volatility of future taxes is something to take into consideration to a retirement plan.

I’ve got people that come in and we cover these issues. And they’re like, “Why hasn’t somebody said that to me?“ I had client after client say that. “Why hasn’t anybody else said this to us?” I said, “Well, I can’t really speak to that, but I can tell you that I can’t just help you with the volatility of the market and say that you’re going to be all right, because the volatility of future tax hikes can also take away from your retirement income.

You look at that 401(k) and you think you got a million dollars there, but do you now? You’ve got a controlling, silent partner on there. How about eliminating that controlling, silent partner out of your life and out of the life of your beneficiaries? Let us help you. We can show you how to do that.”

Figuring out webinars

We did not have a lot of success with shorter webinars. Because of my experience with it so far, I’m still kind of skeptical about the whole thing, to be honest with you.

But we have a couple of online workshops or webinars scheduled for the end of September—what I’ve done is I’ve recorded my regular Social Security workshop. I have trimmed the presentation down to 52 minutes, the gist of my standard in-person Social Security presentation.&v=gwsytjew4abkceau3j05umrd

I’ve got a videographer that has done all my T.V. commercials and stuff, who’s very, very good. I said, “You know what I want to do is, I just want to film it. I want it edited. I want it to be very professional and I want to send it out.” And I’ve got a marketing company saying, “Hey, let’s just take it statewide.”

It’s not on-demand, the webinar is “live” even though it’s recorded. But there will be people, including me, in the live chat to answer questions.

Just like in my live workshops, I’m not afraid of questions because Horsesmouth has kept me on the cutting edge of being able to be a Social Security expert in our area. So much so that the people at the Social Security Administration office here in Springfield send people to our workshops!

Horsesmouth has been a great source of information if advisors “pay their taxes” to learn this stuff. Man, you got 10,000-12,000 people a day aging in as baby boomers. And why wouldn’t you be the person to meet them at the door?

Because these decisions, Social Security and Medicare, are something that every baby boomer is going to face. And if you’re the person that can be there and knowledgeably, not a sales speech, but knowledgeably help them, why wouldn’t they want to consider looking at you regarding their retirement assets?

Following up the webinar

If we take it statewide and it does well, then we can do Zoom appointments with people where we can put our list of credibility so that they can do their due diligence and check us out, do the FINRA advisor search and all the different things. We’re helping them do their due diligence. If the webinar does well in the state, we’ll take it nationwide. It’s kind of a pilot test run.

My Calendly link will be at the bottom of the screen. And people will be able to book either a 15-minute phone call with me or a Zoom appointment offering them Social Security maximization reports, and also offering them a second opinion on their investments. Making sure that they’re positioned for this next chapter of their life with their assets.

I’m offering the option of a 15-minute call because people don’t know me. So I want to give them the benefit of being able to put their toe in the water and get a chance to talk to me. Let’s address some questions and do a little bit of fact finding in that 15 minutes and answer the things that are front-of-mind concerns. As many of the people that are reading this will probably agree, not everybody’s a fit for your practice. And so it helps us decide and it helps them decide.

RA Marketing is the company that I’m using, and they’re very successful with the social media marketing. They do all kinds. I mean, they could even do mailers. And I’ve got an FMO that’s actually paying for all of it. Because of the amount of business we do with them, it’s all covered. So I may end up even doing mailers at some point to try to populate these things.