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I headed home after two beautiful days in Manhattan.
The trip was capped off by the Knicks championship parade. So many people flooded the city, donning blue and orange. The whole place was vibrant and full of a spirit of collaboration unlike anything I could remember.
City Hall prior to the Knicks Celebration
I know a lot people love to end a day of work in a steakhouse, but I’ve never been one of them. I'd much rather grab some dollar pizza and catch live music. My batting average isn't amazing, but lately I'm on a roll. Charlie Harper in London on Saturday. Thrice and Jimmy Eat World in New York, playing Bleed American 25 years on.
Jimmy Eat World at Pier 17
In the crowds of music and sports fans, I felt the same spirit of community. Nobody was trying to impress anyone. The crowds were older. The artists were older. Most of the hits had already happened. So the pretense was gone. People had let their guard down and simply appreciated being alive and being together.
You're probably not here to read this issue of SPIN magazine. So let me tell you where I'm going.
Coming together with people around something unleashes a spiritual aspect in us. Whether it's the Knicks, the crowd watching Thrice play an hour-long set, or your kid's Saturday morning games.
Here's how that connects to your work.
As a multi-time CMO of a couple of very successful firms, advisers often ask me for marketing tips. They want to know how to unlock organic growth.
Because look around. Barring a few exceptions we get to work with, most firms aren't growing organically. They're barely keeping their heads above water.
If you want a tip, it almost always comes back to one thing: Your orientation to community.
Look back at most firms' history and you'll find they were once hyper-focused on a single community. Sponsoring it. Being part of it. Advocating for it.
It wasn't scalable. It wasn't easy. You couldn't be lukewarm about it. You had to immerse yourself. You had to hire people who came from that world and knew it cold.
When Mercer Advisors started in 1985, they served one kind of client. Dentists.
The people in business development knew the whole supply chain. The chair companies. The folks doing the real estate. They knew everything about their client. And it unlocked everything. That focus carried the firm for more than twenty years.
Look at where that focus took them. Today Mercer runs more than 110 offices and oversees around $95 billion in assets. One of the biggest RIAs in the country. It all started with dentists.
Mercer isn't a fluke. The data backs it.
The XY Planning Network studied its advisors. The ones who committed to a niche grew revenue 40.8% in their early years. The ones who didn't grew 15.5%. Same network. Same tools. More than two and a half times the growth.
Kitces found the same pattern. Advisors with a niche serve more clients, and those clients carry around 25% more in investable assets.
Now hold that up against the median advisor today.
Most are struggling to grow. Strip out the market and a huge share of firms are barely adding new clients at all. They're talented. They work hard.
They just never picked a community. They want to be for everyone, so no one thinks of them first.
Here’s a good question for you and your team: What are we all about?
If we're just about growth at all costs, we will lose our way.
Pick a community and go all in, and the work starts to feel different.
Seth Godin calls it your smallest viable market. The smallest group you can go all in on. He says that focus, almost by accident, is the thing that grows you.
It doesn't feel lonely. You're not worried about how your peers are doing. You're not running while looking over your shoulder.
None of that.
You just become the best version of yourself for your people - right alongside them.
Related: Future of Wealth Management Won’t Be Won by Technology Alone