Transitioning from Word of Mouth to Inbound Marketing

Meet Guest, Tiffany Charles

Tiffany Charles, Chief Growth Officer and Partner of Entrepreneur Aligned and Destiny Capital, is primarily responsible for firm growth and leading their talented team in the areas of business development, client experience, professional relationships, specialty markets, and marketing. With over 10 years of experience in the financial services industry and another 5 in commercial real estate, Tiffany has experienced and planned for many forms of success, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation. She has a battle-tested talent in establishing and cultivating meaningful relationships and is extremely passionate about bridging the gap that exists between entrepreneurs' success and the freedoms they desire.

Don't Have Time to Listen, Read the Full Transcription.

[Theme music plays.]

Mary Grothe: Welcome to the House of Revenue. I'm Mary Grothe, Founder and CEO. I love scaling companies to their first 5 million, then 10, 15, and 20. If you've reached a revenue plateau and aren't sure how to get past it, you're in the right place. Listen in as we interview CEOs and solve their most pressing revenue challenges. If you want to be on our show or want to learn more connect with us at houseofrevenue.com.

There's opportunities with companies that have existed for years, decades, centuries to evolve, as the buyer shifts, as the market shifts. And our guest today is in an industry that's been around for a very long time, and there's a perception of what they do and how they do it. Thankfully, you're in for a treat today because Tiffany Charles, who is the Chief Growth Officer at Entrepreneur Aligned is going to share with us what her firm is doing to stand out from her competition of which there's hundreds. I don't know, thousands, millions of people in her profession. And they decided to do something about it, do something different. I'm encouraged by her story and what they've done to this point, and really eager to navigate a few revenue challenges. I'm more like ideas that she has what to do moving forward. We're going to talk about today, how to take a newly branded reframed company that is now positioned above the competition in a way through innovation and a better aligning with their ideal client. And then what do we do with that to diversify the revenue-generating strategies away from what has historically been done?

So Tiffany I'm so honored that you're here. I've had the privilege of being a part of your journey for the last year and a half or so. And I think what you realized working in the world of wealth management, financial advisory. And I remember initially in your story, you were working with a different firm, a different group and you started to realize, wait, I think people want to have a different conversation than what has traditionally been done. And you really stuck your neck out there and said, I am going to just be brave and show up different than most people do. And it earns you an incredible opportunity. And now, as a partner in this firm and being the Chief Growth Officer, you've done something remarkable to short period of time. I'm really excited that you're here. Can you help our audience? I understand one who you are a little bit of your, but also this big shift that you changed.

Tiffany Charles: Yeah. So I am in wealth management. I've been in the industry for over 10 years. Prior to that, I did some commercial real estate, for about five. And, the position that I'm in as Chief Growth Officer really doesn't exist in, wealth management. It doesn't exist in a lot of industries. And what I did was, with the, in working with coaches, business coaches and personal coaches, I really was like, where is my best seat? Where does my skill lie? How can I get paid for it? What's my passion. What am I super excited about doing? And who do I love working with and how do I want to create an impact on this world? And as I went through that exercise, I did it in a mindset of what was, what I consider above the line or below the line type of stuff. So where I was coming from an abundant place or a scarce place. And I developed this position, chief growth officer, I saw that our industry in wealth management had holes. I was wildly passionate about what wealth management solves building personal financial wealth and how that allows people to show up in the world is really positive. The ways in which it's always been done for the cultures that have been built for the advisors to succeed. And what was missing, was something I was passionate about, recognizing the specialized needs of clients is something that was really important to me.

I didn't believe in that generalist growth and I liked the niche. So as I was developing this, I recognized also that really talented advisors liked to be in the seat of advising and not in the seat of growth, and bringing in revenue. And I happened to be really passionate about the revenue and not a client being a client-facing advisor. And there just, wasn't a lot of examples of how I could do what I just wrote in paper in life. And so I decided, okay, well, I'm just going to put it out there. And so I went to the community, talk to people running successful wealth management firms across town and across the nation. I talked a lot about it. And I was really, surprised with how welcomed that position was, growth as a hard, bringing in revenue was hard and these advisors wanted to be in their best seat, too. And I was an interesting solution. And so I leaned in, they leaned in and that is how I became Chief Growth Officer of Entrepreneur Aligned and Destiny Capital.

Mary Grothe: The number one thing here. Okay two. My two takeaways from that one, when you see an opportunity, do something about it. Yes, the world needs more of that. Don't sit on the back seat. You figured it out, you got in there, you brought it to market, multiple people, industry interested, and you were able to secure an engagement that has been very life-giving over the last year and a half, couple of years. The big shift also is acknowledging that most financial advisors I'm also going to sub in here being chiropractors, dentists, accountants, CPAs lawyers, when you are in that technical profession, but your practice requires you to also do business development. It will always be a challenge. It will always be a struggle. What we usually see is it takes left brain versus right brain to do those two types of roles. And there are very few people that are going to not only be proficient in doing all of it, but have joy in doing all of it. So even if they can, they may not want to.

I think one of the biggest gaps that holds those firms back from growth and from scaling is they put unrealistic expectation amongst the expert beam, the advisor in requiring them to grow their business. It's not natural. They don't know how to do it. Most of the time it's extremely uncomfortable. It doesn't feel right. And when things don't feel right to us, we often don't do them. We will find all the reasons why we shouldn't do it, but yet these advisors that you get to work with are brilliant when it comes to the conversation and the power behind what they're doing for their clients. And so the catalyst for these clients to have this freedom and the wealth planning and setting themselves up for the future on their legacies and their children, etcetera. There's a huge gap getting in the way of that because people want that the advisors aren't going to be naturally inclined or blessed with the talents to go secure the new business. However, someone in a Chief Growth Officer role could potentially build the playbook and plan and bring in the processes to make that happen. So what has transpired since you've been in the role, where have you seen some natural growth? What have you brought in for revenue growth?

Tiffany Charles: Yeah, so we're a $3 million company just over, and we grow somewhere between eight to 10%, pretty much year over a year. Although historically, that's been very organic, that is come through servicing our clients well and getting client referrals. Often times, what we like to call is like, you have your personal board of directors, like your CPA or attorney, your investment banker, your CFO, whatever that looks like in your world. And they tend to have other relationships. And when they get to work with us working with our clients, they also give us business. They have the same types of clients we want to work with. We have clients they want to work with and we do an exchange and that's called center of influence marketing. So, really traditionally we've grown through boots to the ground as I call it marketing, personal relationships, one-to-one building.

Mary Grothe: The center of influence marketing, also word of mouth, client referrals, anything that falls into that realm. That's typically how companies grow in the beginning. It's a great way to get to that. First one, two, three, four, 5 million, as long as you can sustain that growth eventually in order to keep up with the growth and continue to even venture into a moment of scale, you've got to make investments into building a pipeline in different ways, because if you it's all very circumstantial, the center of influence, as well as client referrals and word of mouth, it's all very circumstantial in. It happens organically when it happens and it's hard. It feels awful having the direct like, hi, I'm curious if you're know somebody that we should be working with as what, like soliciting referrals is also very unnatural. It doesn't feel good.

Most advisors aren't gonna be really excited about sending the email, picking up the phone. I mean like, so rules, you know, that I should be working in and the person's like, Hmm, I don't know off the top of my head, but I'll call you. If I think of somebody doesn't feel natural, it feels very forced. And then people feel odd in that situation. So the best companies come up with a secondary strategy. Typically companies will start building this to get ahead of that natural decline. And let me just say this specifically to, it may be the same volume of those client referrals, word of mouth, and that center of influence marketing. But if you're trying to get to that three and a half, 4 million, 5 million, those client referrals will only fill a certain amount of the pipeline that needs to be generated in order to be closing at those levels. So bringing in diversification and how you plan to scale has to be of awareness. So we're here. So we're having this conversation, which is brilliant. Step number one, there was a brand shift from Destiny Capital to Entrepreneur Aligned the reasoning behind that is Destiny Capital. It's a beautiful name, longstanding history, amazing relationships rooted in this community. And there's also though there's symbolism with every other wealth management and it's time to differentiate.

When I met you, you were extremely passionate about solving a problem for entrepreneurs. That was more than just wealth management. I love the reference to the board of advisors. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm in my thirties, I'm an executive. I was talking to Tiffany in the elevator on the way up six feet apart with the mask on and was saying like, I'm at that moment now three years into my business where I'm starting to wonder, like, am I doing the right things? My earnings are elevating and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing now. I didn't have a big exit. I don't have millions sitting in the bank, but there's something when with that Entrepreneur Aligned that this firm aligns with entrepreneurs before that big exit, before there's a pile of cash, because there are things that can be done today with seed planting and preparation, to be accumulating more wealth while it's starting to trickle in at higher levels than before there's tax strategies, there's investment strategies, there's diversification between, in your different tax buckets. Short-term, long-term liquid non-liquid and also looking at market trends and where we are in writing market, especially for real estate and other investments. And so there's things that can be done today that you don't have to wait until you have that big pile of cash. Okay, great.

Now I need a wealth manager to make this make more money. So what's interesting with Entrepreneurial Aligned, what I like about that is we're getting into that zone of I'm an entrepreneur, now someone can align with me. It's brilliant marketing. It's a brilliant brand. There's no question of what it is because there is a life cycle of an entrepreneur and your partners through that journey and helping them see small decisions today could have huge payouts, but they could also have bad payouts if they're the wrong decision. And so you're an ally in that also the entrepreneur of today is starting to look more like me. Yes, the 37 year old female. It's not as shocking as it used to be. And where am I going to find resources and information, Tiffany, where would I go?

Tiffany Charles: Yeah. I mean, historically it would have been fairly difficult from a wealth management standpoint because wealth management typically centers their planning around public market investing yet as an entrepreneur, you're choosing to build your wealth through your business. And so there's been this disconnect between the two and we've spent years in the community. We spent years with entrepreneurs just researching this and understanding where do the conflicts exist? What are really your needs and how do we make this shift? And then by the way, how do we market that? Like how do we wrap this in a way that you can understand? We see you, we hear you, we understand you. We're going to put your business at the center of this planning. We're going to put you at the center of this planning. And so really our ideal client is someone who does look in, looks like you and is doing things like you where they have reached a level of financial business success and they're looking for that next Uplevel.

The next Uplevel is partially recognizing the fact that they're in a seat that they don't have to trade off time and money. And they're recognizing that building business wealth does not equal building personal wealth. And we would like to that business be in service of you, along with your other investments, because when you're in a seat where you're also building your personal wealth, and you have levels of security abilities to pivot and invest in opportunities, or you're ready for that next quarterly tax bill, or you're ready for whatever it looks like to retire, to not ever retire, to literally live this on your terms. There is an alignment between business wealth and personal wealth. And that's what we're here to do. It's more consultative and planning based, and we can manage assets and do all those fun things too. But really what we're looking to do is optimize how business wealth and personal wealth are coming together so that you can be in the seat and drive time the way that you want to.

Mary Grothe: And I don't know who doesn't want to learn that. So I just signed up for a webinar that's coming up in a week or two about tax strategies. Cause I don't know, I'm learning. I mean, I know a little bit, but I'm waiting for the big aha and that I laughed at. Like I really should have just called Tiffany, but let me break this down in this new era of you aligning with your ideal client. Yes. They're looking on the internet. They're looking for resources. They are not searching for Google terms. Like I need a financial advisor or best financial advisors or wealth planners in this zip code. They are searching for problems that are long tail key phrases that you can rank for. So what I believe is step number two, because some number one you already did the big lift. This brand is beautiful. I loved the brand announcement that came out. You get it. You know who your ideal client is. You speak their language. Now it's to survey them it's to do individual interviews, to understand more specifically what they care about, the listening for how they answer your questions. You're looking for common phrases, it's doing five to 10 of these interviews, looking for trends and similarities.

When you can start to put the answers into buckets, you'll then carve out what your long tail key phrases are that you should be trying to rank for. And then you can put those across a matrix because you may find different trends in different age of entrepreneur, different geographic location, different industries in different stage of the business. So I would start with those four categories and then come up with two to three interviews per category and then start to identify trends. And if there's any new ones or pattern amongst that matrix from there, I would truly identify if you have to boil it down, geographic region, age range of your entrepreneur type of industry and stage of the business where you think you can secure that best relationship, then you look at those long tail key phrases that they use. You can use a tool like SEM Rush, or Moz, M O Z. You get those tools you put in those key phrases. Then you can put in some of your big name competitors that you know you're competing against. And you can actually ask in your interview, if they've ever worked with a firm like yours, who they've looked at or have worked with, um, you know, Hey, who's the first few names that come off the top of your head.

If you were going to engage in the firm, who would you most likely reach out to, to start your exploration, use those as your competitors. They'll show you in these tools, the backend of the keywords that they're ranking for. You can see if they're ranking for them organically, if they're buying them and doing that through a page strategy, but you can see how your competition is trying to get the same buyer set. From there, you'll probably notice that there's white space and there's a gap because you're not trying to rank for those expensive keyword terms in high, a high competition, keywords like financial planning for CEOs or invest, entrepreneurs. And you want to find a tax strategies or wealth strategies inside of my business, or how do I, you know, fill in the blank? What is that diversify build wealth inside of my business? How did I change? Like the personal wealth? Like when do I do draws from my company? How do I invest that? There's a lot of questions that entrepreneurs are happy, figure those out. Then you're going to create five pillar pages on your website. Five key topics, the most common topics that kept coming up generalized very, very broad generalized topics.

How do I build wealth inside of my business could be one. How do I diversify tax strategies? How do I fill in the blank then within that's your pillar topic, that's a landing page all on its own. Then you're going to have 10 to 15 subtopics underneath that get very granular. The topic of the article that you write should be a long tail key phrase that is written in a way that if somebody typed into Google, the question, then the answer would pop up to your article. Google now is looking for answers to the questions that buyers are typing it. The more hits you get to it, the more specific Google's AI tool says, well, this answers the question. So you're using keywords. You're defining them. You have call-out bot boxes and paragraphs. This is going to start building credibility on your website because today's buyer, especially entrepreneurs, you know, they're super smart. They want to solve their own problems. So they're going online to try to solve their problems. So with all this white space, as you already said, there's your competition's not doing this. They don't have chief growth officers. They're not aligning with entrepreneurs. They're sticking with those old models. You have the opportunity to capitalize on this. You're going to create these pillar pages. You can get a contract writer. You can find someone internally, but you need to get these pieces out.

Then, you need to have amplification across, across that's. That's not correct English across your social channels. Also email distribution lists and whatnot and being able to have this content be broadcast so that you can get a lot of attention to it. You can send these pieces to your center of influence and have them be pieces they can share with their clients. They can share them on their networks. You can try to have it hosted on another site, get links back, help your SEO. Then you can buy a list, a scrubbed list. We have a partner there called science C I E N C E, and they can give you a scrubbed list of human verified beta. Please tell them if you're calling them that you heard this on house of revenue, please. Um, and then you get a list of human verified information. So you say, I want, um, entrepreneurs that have annual earnings in their business between five to 20 million. And they're in this geographic region. In this industry, this number of employees, I want all their contact information. You can upload those into a technology tool like HubSpot. Once they're uploaded into that tool, then HubSpot, when you link it to your website, HubSpot knows when that specific person comes to the website. So you can't spam them. You can't upload them into a list. You have to get their opt-in. So take that list. Let's say you get 200 on entrepreneurs. You set up a cadence and a sequence.

Step one, connect with them on LinkedIn. Don't send a message, just connect on LinkedIn. You want them to say, who is this person? So they'll go to your profile. You want to make sure your profile is rewritten in their language. So they're like, Whoa, I didn't know a firm like this existed that actually cared about building wealth inside of a business and how that translates into personal wealth and Holy cow, like this sounds kind of cool. That could prompt an inbound message that could prompt them to go to your website. Then on your website, you need gated content. You need ways that they can say, Hey, I'm engaged with what you're doing here. Get on an email list.

Then you can start marketing and nurturing to them. But your sales funnel then can also be aligned because HubSpot will notify you. Every action they take. So they go to the website. If they spent two minutes on a certain page, you can create this lead scoring and HubSpot will notify you to say, Hey, this person earned eight points today, call them, get them on the phone. They're obviously looking, they're interested. You can create more of an organic conversation, but then having them in that network, you can also look at supplementing some of your digital strategy with paid media out of the gate. So organic takes time to build, and the gift that keeps on giving forever, but it takes time. You can expect six to 12 months for that to ramp, but on the paid side, you can get people coming in today, but you don't want to waste money. So you have to be cautious.

I would go actually put your paid strategy on LinkedIn and what I would do in LinkedIn targeting with LinkedIn ads is you can do through InMails. You can do through your sidebar ads. You can do in the newsfeed ads. There's a bunch of different types, but that's your target. That's your demographic. Those are your people. And I would find that same kind of entrepreneur, and then come up with that messaging. That's going to really resonate with them and it creates more of that awareness. I think your ad dollars would be best spent in LinkedIn and then potentially some supplemental on Google for some of those keywords you're trying to rank for organically. That's what I would put forth for your initial marketing strategy. But I do think a tool like a HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot Sales, all of this can be automated. You can build your sequences. We use it. I'm also in business development and a CEO and I don't really lift a finger. It just happens. It was just super helpful. So your goal is to jump from this eight to 10% year over year growth to more of a 12 to 15% year over year growth. And you know you're going to continue to get these word of mouth referrals and client referrals and center of influence. So now you've got a diversification in strategy, questions, feedback.

Tiffany Charles: Ooh, that feels so good for the listeners, if you didn't know, I came to Mary and this is why 20 minutes with Mary is a leg revenue. Like this is the best revenue producing activity I could have ever done. Just outstanding. But I came to her because I said, I want to add digital strategies in a really powerful way into how we grow. And I was looking for that solution. It's been something that we've been working on for six months. I have some things in place as you've suggested and I'm missing some things. And so I'm really looking forward to going back to this plan.

Mary Grothe: Well, I'm excited to opt in and continue to engage with the content that you're putting out because obviously, I'm in the ICP. All right. I think we solve some great challenges today. I love the introduction of digital and the diversification in your strategy, hats off to you for what you're doing in the community, I think is very well needed. You've got the white space. How do people learn more? How do they get connected with you?

Tiffany Charles: Yeah, you can. If you have a question, feel free to reach out to me directly at tiffany.charles@entrepreneuraligned.com. Check us out at entrepreneuraligned.com and we also have a podcast called Entrepreneur Aligned.

Mary Grothe: No man. You guys got to jump in on that and listen, Tiffany. Thanks for joining us.

Tiffany Charles: Thank you.

[Theme music plays]

Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're interested in being on our show or want to learn more about how we can help you scale your company, connect with us at houseofrevenue.com or with me Mary Grothe spelled G-R-O-T-H-E on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram.

Connect with House of Revenue® on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

[Theme music ends]