Client Event Marketing Secrets: How This Financial Advisor Builds Relationships

Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial - All right, welcome to another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook, joined by Jeff Bush. Jeff, thanks for spending some time with me today.

Jeff Bush, CEO and Chief Financial Officer at Wellspring Financial - Glad to be here, Mark. It's a pleasure.

Mark Mersman - We're going to dig into some of the cool events that you've done over the years. But before we jump in there, I want you to give a little bit of a backdrop on yourself, the firm, how you got into this business and kind of how we've come to this point in time.

Jeff Bush - Sure, sure. Well, so the name of our company is Wellspring Financial and we just changed our name last year up until late 2024 we were informed family financial services. So we changed our name late last year. We are a full service financial planning firm. with four offices located in Pennsylvania. Our main office is in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Philadelphia. We also have an office in Pottstown, Redding, Pennsylvania, and Allentown. So we have a pretty large footprint geographically here in Pennsylvania. We started the firm back in 2001. And we've been affiliated with USA Financial and USA Financial Securities since 2001. And we have, well, there's two partners. There's myself and there's Steve Jablonski. And then we have another advisor, Shannon LaRoss. And we have three and a half staff people to man our various locations and get all the necessary work done. We work primarily in the retirement market. We build our practice through seminars, through your seminars, the fill the room seminars, along with introductions and referrals and some other ancillary marketing efforts. But it's been quite a joyous ride.

Mark Mersman - Hmm.

Jeff Bush - a little bumpy along the way. know, there's been a lot of, a lot of

Mark Mersman - growth growth never happens in a straight line, right?

Jeff Bush - It doesn't. Yeah, that's for sure. And then I think also most significant to this conversation was in 2022, we acquired another USA financial advisory affiliated firm, which we merged.

Mark Mersman - Yeah, which ultimately helped expand your footprint, you know, where you're at.

Jeff Bush - That did expand our footprint. Yeah. we made an acquisition which the firm that we acquired was only a little smaller than our firm at the time. So we almost, almost doubled in size with that acquisition, which was done about two and a half years ago. that, you opened up all kinds of opportunities and just changed a lot of dynamics in our organization.

Mark Mersman - And I think that's a really good place to start for some of the event conversation because I know there are advisors out there that are looking to acquire. Um, and if you find the like-minded practice, all that good stuff, you can still find the perfect scenario, but you have to get over the hump of getting those clients on board and all that sort of thing. Um, I want to talk a little bit about what you guys did there, um, in terms of that transition from an event perspective. And, you know, now obviously with the benefit of hindsight, would you have done anything different? So touch a little bit on how you started to integrate that other practice. Cause essentially that advisor that, that you acquired, was exiting for the most part, hung around for a little while, but for all intents and purposes was taking a step back in terms of being in the limelight with, with clients. So how did you approach that? Transition and the acquisition there from an event standpoint with those clients.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, so from an event standpoint, the very first thing, and of course, when you make an acquisition like that, you have a lot of things that you're trying to achieve when you're merging firms. But one of the things that we felt was important was to integrate our client appreciation events. So we made that acquisition on June the 30th. of 2022 and typically we have our client appreciation events at the end of the year, November, December. So we worked pretty much right away in getting a client appreciation event scheduled in November of that year in Redding and we, know, to integrate it with our other two that we have in our, you know, that we had in our present territory. So we ended up doing three client appreciation events. That one was really significant in that we used that as kind of a send off to the prior advisors. Can I say his name, Mark? Is that okay? Earl? Yeah, so Earl, we purchased Earl Schultz's practice

Mark Mersman - Me. Yeah.

Jeff Bush - And we use that event not only as a client appreciation event, but also sort of as a little send off, little retirement, a little appreciation for Earl as well. So we had it at the DoubleTree Inn right in downtown Redding. It was attended by, I think we had 125 people there.

Mark Mersman - Retirement party of sorts.

Jeff Bush - clients and staff. So it was pretty well attended and it was really, we, the event was really important. That particular one was important because it gave the clients an opportunity to see us, you know, which is their, you know, their new firm. Cause when you make an acquisition like that, you know, this is like, this is all new to the, to the clients too. Cause they're now they've got All of sudden, they're used to working with one advisor. Now they've got a different advisor, a different advisor team. So that was really an opportunity for us to show who we are. We had a lot of one-on-one meetings up to that point, but it was really our first chance to show them who we were in a larger setting. So that was a key meeting.

Mark Mersman - And if you had it to do all over again, would you have done it sooner in the acquisition process? Like you said that you acquired in June and then that one was in November. Would you have done it sooner or did you feel like it went okay?

Jeff Bush - Yeah, yeah, I don't think so because the timing of it was... mean, was the only, know, we, the, we made, we made the acquisition on June 30th. So it was only, it was only three or four months down, you know, and of course, Mark, it takes a while to plan these things, you know, you tell you, till you got the venue planned and, know, sometimes it's hard to secure a venue on short notice. So, you know, there's, there takes a fair amount of planning effort, a fair amount of lead time to pull these events off. So no, I don't think so. I think that

Mark Mersman - Right. Yeah.

Jeff Bush - the timing of that was pretty spot on. And like I said, there were other priorities that we had during that timeframe. So I think it came together at a good time.

Mark Mersman - What was the flow of the event itself? Was it just a meal? Did you guys talk? What was the nature of how you guys integrated the message you wanted to deliver versus just letting them have a good time?

Jeff Bush - Yeah, well, there was a brief presentation, maybe about 20 to 30 minutes, where I got up and talked and I just kind of gave the clients a background of our firm and just talked a little bit about the acquisition and how grateful we were to have the opportunity to work with these new clients emphasized that we were philosophically aligned with, you know, Earl's, the way Earl handled his practice. So it was a lot of it was really just to put our clients at ease. So we spent, you know, we spent some time doing that. Earl got up and gave a brief talk, maybe 10 minutes showing appreciation. We had a couple of gifts for him. And then we, you know, we, we, we kept the itinerary pretty light. typically don't go over anything technical or anything that's related to our practice from a planning perspective. And then we had, then we served lunch and then we had entertainment. We hired a band that performed for, I guess about an hour they performed. So that was nice too. There was like a jazz band. So we just, you know, gave them a little bit of entertainment while they were there. I would say the. Well, there wasn't anything and there wasn't anything formal dancing, but there were some people that did get up and dance.

Mark Mersman - Was there dancing involved in that sort of thing? Was it that type of a band? Well, they have the proper adult lubricant there to relax.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah. It was good. Yeah. There were a few people that did get up and dance and the band, you know, it's a live band and, you know, so we try to, I think the main goal of these events is we're just trying to get our clients to feel good about working with us. Like just walk away from that event where they just feel good about, Hey, I'm really glad I'm working with these guys. And

Mark Mersman - Yeah.

Jeff Bush - You know, it's nice if we can get introductions, you know, that's always like the, you know, the cherry on top of the ice cream. But, you know, the main thing is for retention, you know, we're trying to just show our clients how much we appreciate them and try to get them to feel good about working with our firm.

Mark Mersman - Sure. Well, and that one in particular too, I mean, there's a very intentional goal for just solidifying the relationship, the retention thing. I'm sure you did not go into that one thinking, we're going to pick up new clients and introductions, you know, from that event necessarily. so let's, let's shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the other events that you've done over the years. And I've got, I've got a list here.

Jeff Bush - No. No. No.

Mark Mersman - That I'm looking at that you guys had sent as we knew this was going to be our topic. You've done a boatload of stuff with your clients over the years. And as we talked about before, some were kind of duds and didn't necessarily accomplish what you were hoping. And then there was some home runs. So mean, everything from kind of annual client appreciation events to painting stuff, to sports games. let's talk about... Let's talk about some of the events right now that you do that are pretty much staples in your practice year in and year out now. So what are the ones that are kind of firmly planted as, hey, these are events we're always going to do as a part of our firm.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, well the staples are these client appreciation events. So now we do three of them a year. So we spread them out geographically from where we have our clients. And typically we'll do two evening events, dinner events, and we'll do one lunch event. So we give everybody a lot of choice as far as which one they want to attend. We do three events. would say over those three events, we're going to probably get about 200 clients and guests spread out over those three events. that's a standard. clients really come to expect that. They know that this is common. And we pick nice restaurants to have them at.

Mark Mersman - Do you typically rotate that? Like, so now that you've been doing this for a number of years, are you changing restaurants or do you kind of have your staples that you like to go to?

Jeff Bush - Not really. mean, we are in this new, this new, this new practice that we acquired. We do shift them between, the Redding area and the Allentown area. So those two cities are probably about, let's say they're about an hour apart. So we'll try, we try to rotate those two, but the other two, we pretty much keep the dinner, event we have at a golf club where I'm a member and then the lunch we have at Italian restaurant, and King of Prussia. So those two, we, you know, we keep the same, the same venue. so those that's really, you know, that I would say that's the staple right there is, is, client appreciation. The other staple at which I think really makes us unique is our ladies day celebration, which we always do that coincides with Valentine's Day. So we typically will pick like the second Saturday of February and we'll invite ladies only. So it's ladies only clients and then they can bring up the four guests. So the reason why, and this is really, I think a home run for us because Typically, ladies don't like to go to these events by themselves. They like to travel together. So it really gives up an opportunity to meet new people. So typically, in the crowd, we'll have, it's a pretty good mix of clients and guests. So we might have, let's say, 60 % of the people are clients and 40 % of the people are guests. prospects and we'll get we'll get 95 to 100 ladies at these this event so it's pretty it's pretty big and again we have that at my golf club and we do have entertainment there too

Mark Mersman - And you do that, do you do it as a brunch? that?

Jeff Bush - a brunch. We've done, we've done it as a launch. but the last couple of years we switched it to a brunch and it's a buffet type, set up brunch. So, then we, and we have, we have entertainment. So we've done a lot of different things. We've had dance, we've had dancers, we've had a comedian, we're going to have a comedian this year a female comedian, which we're really excited about. Last year we had a barbershop quartet. One year we had a Frank Sinatra impersonator. That was pretty cool. Yeah, so we've done we've done a lot. We've had the barbershop quartet a few times. So it's kind of, you know, that that's kind of evolved. The entertainment is just. You know, it's just icing on the cake, but.

Mark Mersman - Huh?

Jeff Bush - It's a way just to make the ladies feel good. It's a day out for them. It's a Saturday. So a lot of times they'll come, they'll have brunch, then they'll go out and do shopping. And a lot of women will come with their daughters. So it's good way for us to meet the next generation of clients. So that is probably.

Mark Mersman - So talk a little about the evolution of this too, because I feel like the last, when we talked after your last event that you did, I think the last one that you did was the biggest ever. And I feel like I heard a number north of a hundred. But the first one obviously wasn't that way. So, you know, give us a sense for kind of what the history has been with it in terms of response, how you've had to build it.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, so we've been doing this. Yeah, I mean, we've been doing this for 20 years. I think it's been a long time. It started out as, you know, like, let's do something for the ladies. Like, there's a lot of ladies who don't have anybody to celebrate Valentine's Day with, right, for whatever reason. So it really gives a, it gave us a chance to say, come and celebrate it with us. You know, like we, we, you know, we really want to show you some love and come to our event. And, we're, you know, we're just, we'll put on a nice, a nice event and, we, and it's only for ladies, right? Cause we felt like the guys, we can take care of them with other things that we do, whether it's a ball game or whether it's something else that caters more to men than women. But this is special, and it's special and exclusive just for women. And I think that makes it makes the women feel even more special because we're there to show appreciation to them. So we really try to make it nice and give them a nice lunch or brunch. And then we give prizes out. We have gift baskets that we give out, which we...

Mark Mersman - I was going to ask you so as you've evolved this over the years what have you found to be kind of effective to help create that experience so you mentioned the

Jeff Bush - Yeah, so I would say the first year we did it, we didn't do much at all. think, you know, I think we might have gone out and bought like a single, you know, we bought a bunch of roses and gave everybody like a single rose. We didn't have any entertainment. You know, we just had, you know, we just had a brunch and that was about it. And then we just kept adding stuff, you know, then we added the gift baskets and then we said, well, let's do some entertainment and.

Mark Mersman - Yep.

Jeff Bush - You know, but we've always one thing that we have not changed is the venue. We've always had it at my golf club. And they just have a really, really nice setup, a very like a really elegant, big ballroom with a nice sound system and it's a dance floor. And it's just it's just really nice. I mean, we have a hundred, you if we have a hundred ladies there, we could, we could put 200 in there if we had to. So it's nice and big and it's, and plus there's, I think there's something about that too, that makes the ladies feel good that it's like, we're going to, you know, we're going to the golf club for, you know, the ladies day. So, and it's created a lot of buzz over the years and we've gotten, you know, we've gotten a fair amount of introductions from it, you know, and some of these, you know, like we get, like, I know last year we got an introduction from a client's daughter and she's been, you know, she's been to these ladies day, branches, like over the years, like maybe the last 10 or so years. And so sometimes it takes a while until the relationship comes to fruition. So you're always planting seeds, Mark, and you never know when it's going to come to fruition. But again, that's only part of why we do it. We're doing it because we really want to show appreciation and show our love to the female clients of ours.

Mark Mersman - And I think that's a big part of it too, is being authentic about it. You know, if you're doing an appreciation event and it's solely about you as the advisor trying to pick up new clients, clients see through that and it becomes awkward. So how do you handle the invites? you, for that one in particular, are you sending physical invites? Are you doing it through emails or phone or, then what is the...

Jeff Bush - Yeah.

Mark Mersman - mean, how do you encourage them to bring others without it feeling weird?

Jeff Bush - We put it right on the invitation, you know, that we send them an invitation that goes out. think for the, you know, it's. We send the invitation maybe four to six weeks in advance and right on the invitation, we tell them that they're, they're welcome to come. They're welcome to bring up the four guests. And we make that very clear on the invitation. And then we do some follow up with email. The email invitation looks just like the paper invitation, except it's coming through on email. And that's just like a reminder. But it is a paper invitation that we send out in a nice pink or red envelope that makes it signify that it's Valentine's Day.

Mark Mersman - Okay. Right. Um, what are you doing to get the guests info and how, you know, how are you handling, you know, nurturing those new introductions that you get? mean, cause I know you well enough, you guys aren't, you know, this pushy group and going to make people uncomfortable, which I think is really important. If you're going to execute this, there's a fine, there's a fine line to walk there. Right. So how do you walk that?

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah, there really is. We try to soft pedal that. When they register, we try to get the name of the people that they're bringing as guests, right? Because we want to give everybody a name tag when they come. we get the names of the guests. So now we have their names. And then when they come, they go to our registration table. We have a registration table as soon as they get inside the door. We ask the guests to sign in, and we ask for their information, their address, and their email address. And then the other thing that we do is on each table. So we have tables of eight set up in this ballroom. So on each table, we'll put a cards that they can fill out if they want more information. So during the course of the event, like we'll talk about things that we have coming up. Like, so for example, this year Shannon is going to be doing women's webinars. Well, this is a perfect audience for that. So, know, Shannon will get up and talk very briefly about these this webinar. So we'll talk about that and we'll talk about some of the other things that we have on the horizon. Last year we were doing the retirement design lab seminars, so we promoted that. We're going to start doing social security seminars again this year, so we're going to promote that. Whatever we have on the docket, we'll talk about. I'm sure this year we'll talk about the name change. You know, so, but, but the point is that we're giving them the opportunity. If they want more information, they can fill out a card that we're going to have on the table. I think we even have a QR code. can scan on your phone, which gets them to, gets them to our website. So, but, but it's very passive, you know, it's very, you know, we really soft pedal it. It's not like we're going to call these people the next day and, know, try to pressure them into coming in for an appointment. Because it really doesn't work that way. You know, it's like it's a timing thing. know, people come to us when they're, you know, when they're ready. The client that I was just telling you about that we got, the guy who was a guest at many of our, prior ladies day events.

Mark Mersman - Yeah.

Jeff Bush - She happened to become a client because she was in a situation where she changed jobs and she had a 401k to roll over. So a lot of it is just the timing of that. Life changes, job changes, and marriages, and divorces, and that kind of thing.

Mark Mersman - You guys do the gift basket thing, but that's more of a raffles off type of deal, correct? There's a few like how do you try to structure those gift backs?

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah. So, well, there's a couple of things. So I got to tell you this, Mark, my wife gets pretty involved with this, with this event. So she makes, she makes these gift baskets and she makes, think she makes like five or six of these gift baskets with it. They all have a different theme. The other thing that she does is that she makes these, either she'll make chocolate covered pretzels or she'll make these, like cake pops. So she makes chocolate covered pretzels. Like everybody will get a pretzel on their place setting or she'll make, or like a cake pop. And they all have like a Valentine theme to it. So it'll be like decorated with red icing and that kind of thing. So we do, everybody will get that. And then the raffle itself, everybody's name will go in a basket, right? So if you're there, if you're registered, Your name goes into a basket and then we pick the name out of the basket and then they win the prize. The five or six baskets that we raffle off. And they're nice. They're nice baskets.

Mark Mersman - Okay. How many clients do you think that you could, new clients do you think you could attribute to these events that you've done over the years? Do have any this particular one? Yeah, even that one.

Jeff Bush - You mean just the ladies day or just like events and jet?

Mark Mersman - I don't know if you've got an anecdotal number to throw out and cause a part of it is it's an advisor thinking about this, you know, obviously ROI comes into play and how long do you have to wait before you start pay off?

Jeff Bush - I would say. Yeah, I would say this would be my advice there. I would say don't do it for that reason, because it's just it's going to be hard. First of all, you never know. It you be you could be waiting 10 years to get a client, which we have. It's it's rarely is going to happen like within a year. Right. So you're just planting seeds. I would say between client appreciation and the ladies day, we've probably gotten 12 to 15 good clients over the years from these events.

Mark Mersman - Yep. Yep. And you're, obviously making deposits in the relationships with, with the existing clients, which, you know, may end up leading to other referrals and introductions.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Well, you know, here's the other thing, Mark, that I think is really important. So as our practice has evolved and now we have, you know, we have AUM, you know, we're getting a lot of recurring revenue. Right, so we've got clients that are basically, paying us every month. Right, so these are relationships that we really have to pay attention to. like, I think some advisors can forget about, you know, paying attention to these clients. So you really have to pay attention to the client, not only the asset that you're managing, but also the relationship. So again, it's a feel good experience where you're having these clients come to this event and you want them to feel good about working with your firm and placing trust in your firm, assets in your firm. it's as much about retention as it is about trying to acquire. you know, new introductions.

Mark Mersman - When you are determining guest lists on who you're going to invite to these, are you opening it up to your entire client base? Are you kind of classifying for these types of events? You know, only this tier client gets it. How do you go through that?

Jeff Bush - Yeah, so we, we invite, so we have different tiers of clients in our, in our database. So we have AAAs, we have AAs, we have single A's and then we have B's. So any, any A classification gets invited to, to these events, the, the events that we've been talking about, the client appreciation, the ladies day. So it's a pretty, we cast a pretty wide net, you know, and, and some of these A clients don't have a lot of assets with us, but they're nice people. We value the relationship. And the other thing Mark is you never know. You just never know where your next introduction is going to come from. so, you know, we, we, we, we go down pretty, pretty deep, for, for these events, you know, we go down right in, right to the, to, to the A the A level.

Mark Mersman - So do you then let's kind of switch gears into some of the other events that you've done. Do you have certain events that are just for your top tier client base?

Jeff Bush - Yeah, sure. Yeah, there's some client events are only for, well, we do some that are just for AAA. And then we have some that are for AAA and AA.

Mark Mersman - some of those types of events that you've done with with those groups.

Jeff Bush - Well, well, the, well, the triple A would be the ideal client event, you know, the ideal client reception, which we did. We did three of those last year. those are really done at a high end, a high end restaurant. You know, you're really giving them, trying to give them a really elevated experience. we gave everybody a nice gift last year. We gave them a, a cutting board.

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush -That was engraved. mean, and we went through the whole advisor protocol experience that we've been through over the last five years. So that was really like a high end experience. And the other and the other thing that we did was we created a book. You know, it's like a pretty, you know, it's like a thick book that we put together, which has It's like the next level of planning, right? So it's like we have all their statements in there, their plan, their legacy. They can add their own information in there, like their other relationships they have with professionals, like attorneys and accountants, other insurance people that they work with. They can put

Mark Mersman - Yep.

Jeff Bush - Their will in there and notes for their kid. It's like a really highly organized document or series of documents that's there for their family when the family needs it. So we give that to everybody that is a AAA that comes to the ideal client event. So that has all evolved with our

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - With the advisor protocol team, which we started.

Mark Mersman - In that event is very intentional though, not, I mean, that is just clients, just those ideal clients, right? We're in, there was a very different intent to that versus a bring a friend type of event that you're encouraging.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we find, you know, the best restaurant that we can find in each area and just really, really try to create a nice experience. that's AAA only. Then what we do for AAA and AA is the legacy events.

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - so that's where clients are encouraged to bring adult children to the event where we talk about like, okay, now let's, get into the next level of planning where we're not, you we, you've already worked with us. We've already, we've already put your income model into play. We've invested your assets. Now we want to talk about your legacy, what's your wish list, how do you want this to unfold with your children and your grandchildren? And we encourage them to bring their children to these events so we can get to know them. Because I always say, I don't want to meet your children for the first time when we're talking about settling your estate after you've died. I want to be able to meet them beforehand in a more favorable situation because it just makes it easier for everybody. And our clients appreciate that and our children appreciate that because it's a way to just solidify and strengthen the relationship that we already have. The other thing that... Go ahead.

Mark Mersman - How did you structure that? Were you doing that with an attorney as well? Because that's a little more educational, obviously.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, we, we, we, it is, it is. and yes, we do have a, an attorney that we work with. In fact, we worked with two different attorneys this last year when we did it. so the attorney comes in and gives their expertise. you know, so they talk about, you know, things that you should be doing pitfalls to avoid. That kind of thing. it's really big value add, I feel. And there is some exclusivity to this. we invite the AA and the AAAs to these events. We just started those last year. And they're very well received.

Mark Mersman - Yeah. what other, what other events have you done that you feel are pretty successful that you would say, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll do that again. Or, I mean, cause you've, you've done some fun ones.

Jeff Bush - My minor league minor league baseball is a big one. So we have, we have two minor league baseball teams in our area. We've got the Lehigh Valley iron pigs, which are based in Allentown. That's a triple a franchise of the, of the Philadelphia Phillies. And then we've got the Redding fighting fills which is a double A franchise of the Philadelphia Phillies. So both of these teams have really nice setup for a group outing. And what we found is our clients really love to come out to these events. They love to come to the ball game. They like to come out for a nice night and just enjoy a ball game. So we used to do just one night. Well, I guess before we made the acquisition, we would just do one night. We'd get a bus to drive up from down in the Norristown area up to up to Allentown, which is about an hour drive, I guess, on the bus. So it was nice. People didn't have to worry about driving and parking. And they wanted to have a couple of drinks during the game. They didn't have to worry about getting in a car and that kind of thing. So that really, you know, was very that event was very well received. Then when we made the acquisition. Of strategic wealth. You know, those clients love baseball too. So we asked, so then we added a second night. So last, last year we, did one night at the Redding Phillies and then we did one night at the, at Lehigh Valley, right? And we gave clients a chance to go to either, either one, but it's very, it's very well attuned. So we get, we probably got a hundred people, we probably got over a hundred people for those, those two events.

Mark Mersman - Yeah, Yeah. And there you find they're a guest oftentimes, or maybe their kids or what have you.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, a lot of times they're bringing, a lot of times they're bringing, they're bringing guests, you know? So again, it's, it's an opportunity for us to, to meet new people. You know, it's it, you know, it's, it's hard, it's hard to be, to meet new people and get introductions. You know, it's like, it's everybody wants to do it. You know, everybody in our business wants to get referrals and wants to get introductions, but it's hard. It's really hard to do. And.

Mark Mersman - Yeah.

Jeff Bush - know, and then we're finding now that we acquired this new practice. You know, we're finding because now we're trying to do it in a brand in a brand new setting and a brand new arena with new people. And it's it's it's it's tough. But, you know, these are you just got to do the right thing, Mark. You've got to do what's right.

Mark Mersman - How often, like for those, are you doing any education there or is that strictly fun?

Jeff Bush - The baseball? No.

Mark Mersman - Yeah, I mean, are you trying to talk at all and introduce yourself or are you just counting on.

Jeff Bush - No, we don't do anything other than they know who we are. That's it. We don't do anything. The education. So the main educational event that we do is in in July, we'll do a market update. A market update. So the market update, I think that's just for double A's and triple A's also. Double A, triple A. So it's really the top tier clients.

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - And typically what we'll do is we'll get a speaker in from one of the companies that we have relationship with. So it could be a variable annuity company. We'll get like a speaker from either their home office or it could be like a fund manager. Right. Like I know with our relationship with Jackson National, had a BlackRock representative come in a couple years ago. what we find, clients want to hear about the market. They want to hear about their money and how their money is going to be doing. So we try to do that mid-year, every year. And those events are also very well attended. I think we had I think we had like 130 people last year between the two events. We do two of these. We do two. We do one in Norristown and then last year we did one up in Redding. This year we're gonna move it up to Allentown and we're gonna do one up there. it's really an educational type event where now so now we are talking business here at this one but that's the expectation. Last year this was really cool this was really cool every advisor should do this. Last year we got somebody from Prudential to talk about fraud, identity theft and fraud and the title of the the title of the of the talk was called Breach. And the gal that did this was fascinating. was smart. She knew what her stuff was. And she was a very entertaining speaker. It's hard to get that combination. And she was really good, really dynamic. But I think every advisor should do this because this has been

Jeff Bush - This is an ongoing issue and will continue to be an ongoing issue. And particularly for our clients who are a little more vulnerable than I would say the average person simply because they don't have the tech savvy, right? Like a 70 year old person doesn't have the same tech savvy as a 30 year old person, right? So I think it's just, and she just like gave a lot of tips, a lot of things to be aware of, you know, with your phone, with your email, with your laptop, you know, all this stuff. It was just really, really good. I mean, like I said, everybody should be doing this. It's just a good, it's just a good service to provide to, to your clients. So we did that last year and that was very well received.

Mark Mersman - you typically so if you get If your clients bring friends there and you get their contact in for you, I'm assuming you're throwing them in your drip system and button touches out to them.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all will email them. We'll send emails. You know, I think I think now, you know, now we've got a new marketing person here. You know, we hired my daughter last year, Lauren, and she's, you she's got a marketing background and you know, she's, I think we can have a more focused effort on some of this stuff that we didn't have previously. So she, going to probably have her calling some of these people and just getting not, not in a pure, you know, try to set an appointment, kind of a phone call, but just, uh, you know, thank you for coming. You know, do you have any questions for us? there, you know, we offer a second opinion, you know, that kind of thing. Um, And I think we're gonna be a lot more intentional with some of these events that we're doing and the follow-up.

Mark Mersman - Yep. So I know you've, we've talked about a few of them. You've done some unique ones. The Antique Roadshow. What was that event about? Cause that was a little outside the box.

Jeff Bush - that was a fun one. That was a fun one. So that's like a TV show, which I had never heard of. But it's like they just. You know, they they some people are really into to antiques. So the lady that does this show is from Philadelphia. She's from our area.

Mark Mersman - Yeah.

Jeff Bush - So normally when she goes and does these talks, you got to pay her a lot of money and you got to pay her, her transportation. So I got her to agree to speak to our group without, so I didn't have to pay any of her, her transportation because she, because she lives right here. So, but I did have to pay her a fee, know, pretty hefty fee. I forget, I forget how much it was, but it was, it was pretty, it was pretty substantial. But what this is what was really cool about it. You could come and bring your own antique. And she would appraise it. You could get you got a free appraisal. Tell you, tell you, you what.

Mark Mersman - Yep. give in. Oftentimes she knows backstory and history on where it comes from. Yeah.

Jeff Bush - Oh, that's, that was the coolest thing about it. She, she had like backstories about everything I brought. I brought a civil war. My dad had this civil war cannon, right? That was never was never shot off. Right. So I, and this thing's humongous, right? So I like took it up. I took it apart, put it in my car and brought it and set it up and everything. And she,

Mark Mersman - Right?

Jeff Bush - she was like spot on with this, this, um, this cannon and said what it was worth and, and when the best time to sell it and all this other stuff. And, she did it, but every, and everybody did this, you know, we had, I forget how many people were there, like maybe 35 people there or something like that. But that one was, that one was very unique. But, every, but everybody loved it.

Mark Mersman - Well, the thing that to me made it so cool, anybody that went to that, they're gonna remember that. That's just a memorable event that's like, man, this is awesome.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah. And that's really what we're trying to accomplish here. And the other thing that is pretty cool and also very memorable is we have access, we have had access in the past to these luxury suites down at the ballpark, right? Whether it's baseball or basketball or hockey. in like, so for example, in the Wells Fargo Center here in Philadelphia, we partner, we do a lot of business with a firm that has a suite inside of the Wells Fargo Center. So the Wells, so they allow us to, have access to this suite for a game. So this suite is all ours. It's private, right? So we can put maybe 16 to 18, let's say 18 clients in there and they're experiencing the game from this suite where they have access to, you know, food and drinks and a private, private restroom and all that, right? TV screens is that it's really like a high level experience. same thing for baseball at Citizens Bank Park, which is where the Phillies play. So the suite there is right behind home plate. And it's the same type of experience. like last year, we had... We had that suite for a prime game, like was that the Yankees came into town and there's a little bit of a I shouldn't say a little bit of rivalry. There's a big rivalry with Yankee fans and Phillies fans. In fact, you can probably see my Yankee. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so that was really cool. So we had, you know, the sweet full and there was a Yankee fans in there and there's more Phillies fans.

Mark Mersman - I was going to say, for those that are watching the video, you can tell who Jeff was rooting on.

Jeff Bush - And it was just a lot of fun. It was just that. that was really, really a high end experience because you're right behind home plate, really, really close to the ball game. And it just, you know, so that's like a really elevated experience. And, you know, though that's only that's reserved for just your really, really top tier clients. Just the top, the top of the top for that.

Mark Mersman - Sure. How do you determine, I mean, when you come into a new year, are you budgeting, we're going to do X amount of thousand dollars of inclined event marketing this year? I mean, how are you approaching that? know, what's, do you track your ROI on it? You know, to a certain extent, knowing, you know, that can be years down the road.

Jeff Bush - We don't track ROI. But what we do is we have a whole planning day that we do in late October for the following year. So for example, for 2025, we met in October of 2024 and laid out our whole schedule for next year. Because it takes, you know, have to.

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - You have to get all these dates in place. You got to call the venues and reserve the venues and you know, there's a lot of coordination and you got to get them on a schedule so that everybody's scheduled around these, you know, these events. So it takes a fair amount of coordination and I like to have involvement from the entire team. So really our entire team is sitting in a conference room for, you know, an entire day you know when we're laying out all these events and yeah we're putting a budget on like we know what all these events are going to cost and you know there's some organization to it rather than you know just like opening the year on January 1st and say okay now what are we going to do

Mark Mersman - Well, I'm telling you though, Jeff, I think you're laying out honestly, as silly as it is, it is the formula. It's the secret formula that you have to get the dates on the calendar. can't tell you how many advisors I have conversations with. Oh, I want to do some client events and, oh yeah, we'll maybe think about doing it in first quarter. And then four weeks before they were planning on the event, we got this in the way or that in the way, maybe we won't do it. I mean,

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Mersman - You need to plot it out ahead of time.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, which we, which we do. And of course we've been doing this now for such a long time and you have to be really, really intentional with it. And, know, the thing I've found to Mark is like, if you have to make adjustments to your schedule, that's fine. You can always do that. and we have in the past, cause you know, it's just out of necessity, but If you have a plan in place, it just makes it a lot easier to execute. like I said too, it's like calling these venues and getting reservations, you know, lot of these places want deposits. You so you got to have all this stuff planned ahead of time. So I would say that that's probably important that you want to have a plan going out at least a year ahead.

Mark Mersman - Yep. As you think about some of the other fun events that you've done, comes to mind? What do you feel like are some of the cool ones that you've done?

Jeff Bush - Painting with a twist. painting with a twist is, that's actually the name of the company, Painting with a Twist. the generic idea is this. You go...

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - And you get maybe 15 to 20 people in this studio where everybody's painting the same thing. Right. So it's usually like very topical. Right. Like one year we went in October and everybody was painting this pumpkin. Right. So you have a and then you have a leader that's like telling you what to do, like mixing all your colors and and you're but you're creating this painting and then the whole idea is, you bring you bring your own wine and that's where the twist comes in, I guess, you know, like you're drinking wine. Yeah, you bring your own wine and and and usually like cheese and crackers and some soft drinks and things like that. And and then you're just it's just the experience of your your your creating your own your own.

Mark Mersman - Huh. So they let you bring your own wine. Okay.

Jeff Bush - your own work of art, your own canvas. So we're doing that this year. So that's pretty cool. And that's not that expensive. think that costs like, I don't know the exact price, but I want to say like maybe $40 a person. I could be wrong on that, but it's not.

Mark Mersman - No. Yeah, I mean, even if it's 40 bucks a person and you get to bring the food and drink and.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, you bring your own. It's like we usually just get like a tray of cheese and crackers and then a couple bottles of wine and you're good to go. It's like super easy. And again, you're trying to create a neat experience. Like it's just fun. there, you you're there, you know, it's like I'm horrible at this painting, know. It looks like it was, yeah, like a third grader could do a better job than I do, but it's fun nevertheless.

Mark Mersman - You and me both!

Jeff Bush - And if you have a good leader or a good moderator, they can make it fun too. yeah, so that's just like I said, it's just something to make it fun.

Mark Mersman - So you've done something at the zoo. I know that.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. So the zoo, we're going back to the zoo this year. We haven't been to the zoo in a while, but that's fun too. You know what we've done in the past with the zoo, we try to pick like these local zoos, like there's a zoo in Norristown and there's a zoo up in Allentown. We try, we like, we don't go to the Philadelphia zoo. That's like a huge, you know, urban type zoo with all these, you know, a lot of animals. These local zoos are

Mark Mersman - Right.

Jeff Bush - much more family friendly. So there we're trying to encourage people to bring their children and their grandchildren. We've done it a couple of times on Grandparents Day. So that's like in September. I think it's like the second Sunday in September. And the weather's still really nice. so the idea is you come and you bring your grandchildren. You just go in and enjoy the zoo.

Mark Mersman - I think the thing I like about some of these two, it's bridging generations, right? And I think that's a big part of what you're trying to accomplish. We know that that wealth is gonna change hands at some point and how can we do things in events to help facilitate some of those relationships? And sometimes it's hard, they're out of state or whatever, but a lot of them do have family that are close and

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they do. and that's, you're right. Um, you know, it's all about trying to get to know the, and I think too, if you make the effort with your clients, like, you know, I really want to get to know your children, you know, it would be nice if, you know, if I could meet your children and cause like, I think I said earlier, you don't want to meet these, your children of the, for the first time when you're settling a death claim.

Mark Mersman - No. Nope.

Jeff Bush - And believe me, I've done that many times in my career, many times, when that's like the, that's the very first conversation I'm having with their children. And you do it and it's, you know, obviously it's a professional, you try to develop a professional relationship, but if you can create your legacy this way and get to know the children and you know, we've got a fair amount of second and we've got one. Third generation, one or two third generation clients, which that's pretty cool. Grandparents, parents and grandchildren. So we've done that a couple of times. And that's really cool when you can do that.

Mark Mersman - Yeah, yeah, that is cool. So as you look back, if an advisor is thinking for the first time, I want to do some client events. What advice do you have for them?

Jeff Bush - Well, client appreciation is kind of a no-brainer. You want to do that. And then just try to pick some that are unique to your own personality, like whatever your likes are. I like baseball, so we have these baseball events. But Steve you know, he likes to golf and we even talk about that. Like he has like, like he has an event where he has like golf lessons. and then they golf nine holes. so he does that, but my, my advice, Mark would be, you know, you got to, I would say to start small. so try to do like client appreciation. And then pick out one or two other things that are unique to your personality or maybe unique to where you live. Like we're doing minor league baseball because we have a minor league baseball team close to us. Well, not everybody can do that. wherever you are, there might be things that are unique to you know, your local area. And I would say make it reflect your own personality and who you are, right, as a person.

Mark Mersman - I think the key, the key to that, that ensures that you're having fun with this. You know, if it's something that you're, you would enjoy, you know, the clients that are going to enjoy it are the ones that will show up. And I think doing this type of marketing makes your work feel not like work, right? And if you can engage with these clients in a fun environment. And I think the other thing that I would say, you know, I can,

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah

Mark Mersman - already picture some of the advisors listening to this and say, boy, a hundred person event. Either I don't have that many clients right now that I would want to invite, or that feels like a lot to organize. I don't think that you need to start there. And in fact, a lot of your events now probably started a fraction of the size and

Jeff Bush - No. Small. Yeah, I would say, you know, here's the other thing. You got to walk before you run. You you start, you know, you just do what you can, what you can handle and what you, what your budget can, you know, can handle. But it's nice to plan these that like, if you're, I assume we're going to be. Publishing this thing like an early part of the year, but I guess it's really a good time of the year to start Planning for things that you might be doing middle to end of the year You know these these you know nail down your venue I get you know try to get some you know some future plans in place here but anything that can create a Really good experience for your client like get you so you can get them to come away with a good feeling about you and your firm, right? So like the advisor is really important, but it's also important is like the people on your on your team. You know, you got to put them out there too that, you know, because your clients aren't always communicating with you. You know, they're communicating with your team also. So, you know, you want to make them part of it as well.

Mark Mersman - And you're kind of treating these events as an all hands on deck from your team and be, you know, pretty much part of the expectation of the team is to participate and be there. And it's kind of an extension of your work day. and, and I think it's a huge win for them, you know, to, forge those relationships. A lot of times they're having to have tough conversations or track them down for this, that, or the other thing.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mark Mersman - If they've got a relationship outside of the work environment that they can draw from, I think that that's huge. And, and I'll say on the small event thing, I mean, there's a big advantage to doing the small events, you know, the 10, 12, 14 people, you they're much more intimate and, that's obviously much more cost effective. I mean, your paint event is probably a fraction of what you pay for your, you know, baseball outings and.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, right.

Mark Mersman - You can probably argue it has the same kind of impact just in a little different way.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, you know what, Mark? Here's the other thing that we haven't really talked about yet. But if you can get these companies that you do business with to give you some marketing support, like if you can make that work, like a lot of these wholesalers, they have a budget to help advisors, right? So they'll help you with they'll give us, you they'll give you money for client appreciation. They'll give you money for like the ladies day. We've gotten some some help market updates. So if you can get them to help that, you know, that helps defray the cost to like I know when we did that antique road show, the comp, the firm that I was working with on that, I got them to pay for a significant part of that that night.

Mark Mersman - Yep. Yep.

Jeff Bush - So that helps too. That helps a lot, actually.

Mark Mersman - Absolutely. Yeah. mean, especially if you're going to commit to doing a lot of these events, that's, you know, it's a big investment, no doubt. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to wrap this up with a few rapid fire questions, Jeff. So, what's your, what's your favorite business book?

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Okay, I'm ready. Wow. My favorite business book. Well, first of all, I'm a big, I love Tony Robbins, right? Dan, Dan, I like Dan Sullivan stuff, right? So there's a book called, that Dan put out, it's called Who Not How, right? So that's a good one.

Mark Mersman - Okay.

Jeff Bush - Tony Robbins, Awake the Giant Within. So it's kind of like business and motivation at the same time.

Mark Mersman - Yep, best piece of advice you've ever received.

Jeff Bush - Best piece of advice I've ever received? Well, I've received a lot of advice. And I've received a lot of advice from your team. I would say the biggest piece of advice, just don't give up. Just keep persevering. Just keep.

Mark Mersman - Yeah. Hahaha Yep. Keep your foot on the gas.

Jeff Bush - Believing in yourself, have confidence in yourself and just keep doing what you're doing.

Mark Mersman - If you weren't a financial advisor, what would you be doing?

Jeff Bush - I'd be playing baseball. I'd be a baseball player.

Mark Mersman - For the Yankees?

Jeff Bush - Of course now at my age I might be retired but maybe I'd be manager.

Mark Mersman - You've gone to beer league softball at that point is what you've done.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, yeah, well my knees are bad now. I think it went too much catching in my younger days, I like the strategy of it, so I'd probably be a manager.

Mark Mersman - All right, last one. Since we talked about events today, what's the most memorable event that you've ever attended?

Jeff Bush - Most memorable event that we've done.

Mark Mersman - Well, I guess I'll ask what you've done, but also that you've attended.

Jeff Bush - Well, that we've done, I would say would be that baseball game that we had, uh, last year, Yankees versus Phillies. That was probably going to be the most, most memorable, uh, that I've attended. Wow. I've attended some good ones. I've attended some good events over the years. Um, Ed slot had a nice event in Chicago about 15 years ago. Uh,

Mark Mersman - Okay. Yep

Jeff Bush - Some of your chain of secret events, like some of the early chain of secret events, I really got a lot out of those. I find Mike, your guy, Mike Walters, to be very inspirational with his, and he's very intuitive with a lot of his thoughts. So those have been good events to attend as well.

Mark Mersman - Sure. Awesome. Well, hey, man, I appreciate it. I didn't realize we'd even run this long, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Jeff Bush - Yeah, well we had a lot we got a lot to talk I've been with you guys for 20 I guess this is my 25th year so we got we got a lot to talk about

Mark Mersman - You've accomplished a lot and congratulations for all that you've accomplished. It's been awesome to see and every year you reinvent yourself different ways, which is kind of cool.

Jeff Bush - Yeah. Yeah, it's been fun, Mark. I appreciate the time this morning.

Mark Mersman - Yep, alright, Sir. I appreciate it. Will catch you soon and for all you listening. This was Jeff Bush and get out there and think about doing some fun events for your clients and good things will come from it so. Take care Sir, appreciate it. Alright back up.

Jeff Bush - Okay, all right. Thanks, Mark.

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The Financial Advisor Marketing Playbook is a podcast/video series for high-performing financial planning professionals that are committed to improving their craft, helping their clients, and growing their business. Hosted by Mark Mersman, Chief Marketing Officer at USA Financial, this series contains a wide variety of content – from quick win ideas to long-form interviews, each episode provides actionable marketing ideas and insights that can be implemented easily into your practice. From digital marketing to traditional direct-response marketing, each episode delivers straight-forward and engaging content that any financial professional can use to improve their bottom line and grow their practice.

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