Cultivating Creativity in Advisor-Client Engagement and Strategies
In the realm of financial wellness advice and strategies, creativity is a valuable asset. Financial advisors are encouraged to push boundaries and explore inventive ways to engage with clients, tailoring strategies that resonate with their life journey and financial ambitions. Modern tools like social media offer dynamic platforms for interactive engagement, enriching the advisor-client relationship. Moreover, creativity involves not only devising innovative investment opportunities but also staying flexible in response to shifting market dynamics. At its core, a creative approach cultivates trust, enhances engagement, and nurtures enduring relationships, positioning the financial advisor as a committed partner dedicated to crafting solutions tailored precisely to each client’s needs.
At the conclusion of The Plan Sponsor University (TPSU) Fiduciary Education Program held on the campus of Marquette University, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fred Barstein, founder, and CEO of TPSU, interviews Todd Barden, Founder of Great Lakes Retirement Plan Consultants. Todd serves annually as an adjunct lecturer for TPSU in Wisconsin. In this conversation, Todd discusses his evolving financial practice, emphasizing a holistic and creative approach to create a unique total rewards experience for clients. He attributes their high engagement rates in financial wellness to three components: engaging technology outreach, a distinctive and valuable experience provided by a team of certified financial planners, and face-to-face guidance through numerous financial options. Todd predicts a shift toward entertaining and engaging content like YouTube videos to articulate benefit structures effectively in the future.
Read the Full Transcript Here:
Fred Barstein:
Greetings. This is Fred Barstein, CEO and Founder of TPSU and 401kTV. I am here with our adjunct lecturer for Wisconsin at Marquette. We hold our programs at Marquette. Todd Barden. Welcome, Todd.
Todd Barden:
Good to be here, Fred.
Fred Barstein:
Okay if we ask you a few questions?
Todd Barden:
Absolutely.
Fred Barstein:
Okay. So before we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice.
Todd Barden:
Yeah, thanks, Fred. Well, I’ve been doing this for a few years, but as far as the practice, it’s really evolved through the years. And when I say that, it’s all about the people and it’s about the experience and it’s about the change that we’re trying to make. So I think today, my practice is more of a total rewards experience. It could be 401(k), it could be non-qualified, it could be employee stock purchase plan, but it’s really bringing all of these things together to try to make a unique experience for every colleague or participant.
Fred Barstein:
So in that vein, there’s a lot of talk and there has been for a while about financial wellness, and we know that the issue really is engagement. We’re seeing a very low engagement rate, but you seem to be getting a much higher one. Can you explain what’s going on, and what you see and what you’re doing that’s making a difference?
Todd Barden:
Right. Well, certainly financial wellness, as you know, Fred is in the forefront of our industry right now. But I’d like to think that there’s really three reasons that we maybe do things different. But to back up before I talk about those three is I’ve been an athlete pretty much all my life. Been a marathoner. I’ve done Ironmans, I’ve competed into the ring in kickboxing and what those experiences have taught me, it’s all the same, right? Wealth and health, it’s about having a plan. It’s about working your plan, and it’s about being a finisher is those three things.
But getting back to the financial wellness, I really think there’s really three components to the secret sauce. Number one, you have to have really good technology, and the technology has to be engaging. And what do I mean by that is that most people have access to internet, and you would think we’d all have the answers or we use AI, we have the answers. But the first thing you need to do is have a good way to outreach people to maybe get them excited about what you want to do. That’s number one.
Number two, it has to be something unique as far as an experience that they haven’t had before. We found that having a whole team of certified financial planners that can articulate a plan, and many people that work for these firms really want to have a plan. They just don’t want to spend the $1,500 or $2,000. Now is the value added to say, “Wow, let me tell you about our 401(k). Now you get a financial plan. You have access to a certified financial planner.” That kind of changed the dynamics of all of that.
And the third thing is, again, having someone walk them through all these myriad of options and myriad of things they can do and it’s a face-to-face. I mean, most people our age, Fred, we want to look at someone face-to-face. When you’re dealing with your retirement money and the most biggest asset you may have, you want to have that connection. You need to feel that connection, and we just feel that that’s the secret sauce for us.
Fred Barstein:
Cool. So I know that you do these TPSU programs at Marquette every year. What did you focus on this year in September, all around the same time, middle of September, and what are you looking at in the future for content for people looking to come to your programs?
Todd Barden:
Yeah, great question. So I think this year was really about the health and wealth conversions. Is most benefits directors, most HR directors, they don’t have time to have one 401(k) advisor, one stock plan advisor, one non-qualified advisor. They’re just too busy. What most people look for is somebody that’s got the expertise and knowledge to bring that all together and really help them within that. So this year, the program was a lot around that, as well as obviously some of the new legislation that’s come this way, how that impacts people, what they should be thinking about.
But thinking about next year, I think a lot of this is going to circle back to how do you… Everyone’s got benefits. We all have benefits, but how do you articulate that? And I think what I foresee, or what I think is going to become more paramount is it’s almost like being an entertainer. And I say that because we have to capture the attention of all of our people, and maybe it’s a quick YouTube video of explaining your benefit structure and they can see that. They can feel it. They can see who’s involved into it. I believe that we’re going to start to see more of that and make it more engaging because there’s a reason why YouTube and TikTok are blowing up. That’s how people like to consume that information. So that’s what I think Fred, but time will tell, as they say.
Fred Barstein:
Yeah, we don’t seem to have much engagement issues with social media, right?
Todd Barden:
We do not. We do not.
Fred Barstein:
Well, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you, Todd. Thanks for contributing and being an adjunct lecturer for TPSU, which is an independently run education program for plan sponsors. And as I said, we always do our programs in the middle of September at Marquette, so we hope to see you there next year. Thanks, Todd.
Todd Barden:
Great. Thanks, Fred. Great to see you.
