The Influential Advisor

070: Truest Fan: Aligning Purpose with Business Success with Rob Brown

• Paul G. McManus

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In this podcast episode, I welcome Rob Brown, author of Truest Fan and a business coach, to explore how purpose-driven practices can transform your business and personal life.

Rob's unique approach to mentoring financial advisors and business leaders, highlighting the importance of self-belief, authentic client relationships, and purposeful action.

Rob's Journey

  • Early Career Success: Rob began his career at Payne Weber (now UBS) and spent 25 years as a top-producing financial advisor, earning recognition for his exceptional client service.
  • Leadership Roles: As a branch manager and later COO, Rob oversaw 250 advisors while running his own practice, balancing management and mentorship.
  • Founding His Consultancy: After stepping away from executive roles, Rob established his coaching business, helping advisors rediscover purpose and excel in their careers.


Purpose: The Key to Unlocking Authentic Growth

  • Defining Purpose: Rob explains that many advisors feel successful but unfulfilled, measuring their achievements solely by assets under management or revenue. He encourages them to dig deeper into their "why."
  • Beyond Metrics: Purpose isn't just about financial goals; it’s about creating meaningful client relationships, supporting causes, and being intentional in personal and professional life.
  • The Truest Fan Philosophy: Rob emphasizes that being your own truest fan and uplifting others are essential steps to living and leading with purpose.

The Power of Authorship in Business

  • Rob’s Writing Journey: He discusses how writing Truest Fan was both a passion project and a strategic business decision. 
  • Benefits of Writing a Book: Rob shares how Truest Fan has served as more than just a book—it’s a tool for establishing thought leadership, sharing his philosophy, and connecting with his ideal audience.
  • Advice for Aspiring Authors: Rob encourages anyone considering writing a book to stop overthinking and start writing, emphasizing the lasting impact a well-crafted book can have on your career and personal legacy.

Collaborating with Clients for Greater Impact

  • Building Affinity: Rob discusses the power of working with clients you genuinely enjoy, creating natural opportunities for referrals and deepened trust.
  • Elevating Service: He highlights the importance of focusing on what truly matters, such as improving client experiences and building strong teams, rather than being bogged down by routine tasks.

Conclusion:
Rob Brown’s philosophy of being a Truest Fan offers a fresh perspective on how financial advisors and business leaders can align their goals with their values. By embracing purpose and building meaningful relationships, he demonstrates how success can be both fulfilling and impactful.

About our guest: Rob Brown, author of Truest Fan and a business coach.

You can learn more about his work:

https://truestfan.com/
https://truestfan.com/scorecard/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

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Speaker 1:

As financial advisors, we're always looking for ways to grow our business and make a bigger impact, but sometimes in our pursuit of success, we lose sight of what truly matters the genuine connections and relationships that make our work meaningful. Our guest today brings a fascinating perspective on how to achieve both impact and authenticity in our industry. Rob Brown, author of Truist Fan, has not only been a top producing advisor himself, but now coaches others to reach new heights in both their business and personal lives. What makes his approach unique is how he weaves together lessons from America's favorite pastime, baseball, with profound insights about living and leading with purpose. Rob, welcome to the show. I'm excited to explore how being someone's truest fan could transform the way they think about our role as advisors. Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 3:

That was a great introduction. I love the mention of my favorite pastime.

Speaker 1:

As we dive into it. Help me connect the dots. What is your specific connection to baseball?

Speaker 3:

I am the self-acclaimed greatest Cleveland Indians or Guardians baseball fan. I was born to be a Cleveland fan, despite the fact that we haven't won a World Series in my lifetime. It is just a fun pastime.

Speaker 1:

I want to make sure our audience knows your personal background and stories. You went from being an advisor to now both an author and a coach for business owners and entrepreneurs, mostly in the financial advisory space. Tell us more about your story and how you got from there to where you are today.

Speaker 3:

I did an internship at the old Payne Weber, which is now UBS. From there I knew that I wanted to be in this industry, and so I spent 25 years as a financial advisor, had a great practice, a great team, were recognized for being top producers as well as great deliverers of client service. As I was doing that, I had the opportunity to move into management. I was a branch manager for a while and then I actually stepped up into executive management and was the chief operating officer of a firm where I helped, say grace over about 250 other advisors. I did that while running my own practice.

Speaker 3:

I was good at balancing a couple of different things, but what I realized in doing those things is that what I enjoyed the most was mentoring and coaching those advisors that I was working with, and I took an opportunity, I should say, to step away from management. The bureaucracy got to be a bit too much for me and I created a consultancy that I started about 20 years ago to work with advisors, helping them be the best versions of themselves as they grow more profoundly in their businesses.

Speaker 1:

What do you find are the common challenges that the advisors that end up working with you face? Are there any common challenges, similarities between what they're struggling with and what leads them to you? Yes.

Speaker 3:

So most of my clients have had some level of success in the industry. In many cases they're feeling very fortunate. They've had the success that they're having. Maybe they're making more money serving more people than they ever have before. But they get a little bit of burnout or hit a little bit of a plateau where they're thinking. I've been measuring success for a long time based on assets under management or GDC or recurring revenues, and using that as my only barometer for judging success isn't enough. They want to dig deeper and put some more purpose and meaning into their business. They want to go from being an advisor with a business to being a business owner that is an advisory firm. So they want to make that shift.

Speaker 1:

Just to let our audience know how Rob and I met is that Rob has a podcast called the Purpose Focused Advisor. Let's jump into the book a little bit, or the podcast, whichever you want, kind of frame that out in terms of what the book or what the podcast is driven to do.

Speaker 3:

They both drive towards roughly the same thing the purpose. Because purpose is the thing that when you get it right, your productivity increases, your profitability probably increases. You grow because you're doing what you're doing, because you know why you're doing it, and I think understanding that, why that purpose is, just create a whole different energy. It's like fuel for taking your practice to that next level, and so that's why I really spend time talking about purpose. Part of my book, the full title it's a long title, it's Truist Fan, live, love and Lead with Purpose and Impact.

Speaker 3:

I am a huge believer that we are all called to be the best versions of ourselves and in being the best version of ourself, we have to be our truest fans. We have to believe in ourselves. But you can't stop there, that you also need to be truest fans of others around you, especially if you're an advisor and you want your clients to be your truest fans. So I think being a truest fan is a big circular thing of just wanting the best for yourself and for other people and to be your truest fan. So I think being a truest fan is a big circular thing of just wanting the best for yourself and for other people and to be able to share that and spread that, and that is exemplified in purpose.

Speaker 1:

What do you find, besides money, that people have as their purpose or when they're looking for a purpose other than money, or revenue or income? What are the through lines that you see in the clients that you work with? What gets them up in the morning, what really motivates them and grounds them to that higher purpose, and what is the higher purpose? There are a lot of them.

Speaker 3:

I just had a conversation earlier today with an advisor whose purpose in his business is to be able to share his faith with his clients and spread. That's a big purpose. He sees the tie between helping people achieve their goals and tying it to their faith and their beliefs as being really important. So that's a big purpose, a higher calling, if you will. I have other clients that I work with who really have the purpose of being more intentional about the way they raise their children or are as husbands or wives or fathers or mothers, because it's easy to say I want to make more money so I can send my kids off to college.

Speaker 3:

But, it's another thing to say. I really want my kids to have opportunities that I didn't have. I want them to be able to do college and get their PhDs or whatever that means to them. That might still require making more money and growing their business and their revenues, but it's just flipping the script. I also find that financial advisors are incredibly generous. They love finding causes that they care about and they can support, so sometimes that purpose is something that they attach to their business or they will change a little bit the way they structure their business so they can spend more time with that cause or in that community that they want to support. There's so many different ways to draw that out, but we don't always take a step back and say what is it that I really want? Why am I doing what I'm doing? What impact do I want to make in the world?

Speaker 1:

I find it just in myself and others that sometimes there's different reasons why you want to tap into your purpose. I'm a marketer by trade. If I were to say what's my background, I'd say I'm marketing and from a marketing perspective there's a lot of power in really one having a purpose. But also, I would expand that to say when you have an affinity group right, group right and so business becomes that much more enjoyable or can become that much more enjoyable and profitable when you're passionate about what you do, but also when you have that affinity group that you just love being part of. So instead of having a business that kind of is a hodgepodge and ultimately you work with people because they have money and they pay you, but instead you have a roster of clients who you love working with that you would hate to lose them and you'd love to be able to duplicate them and clone them.

Speaker 1:

I think the more you are attached to some affinity group which might be attached to your purpose just really makes it that much more fun, makes it that much more easy. And then it's interesting many people go from this idea of wow, it's hard to do this or it's a struggle, or why is this getting so easy to do. Just, I guess that was my thoughts as you were speaking that how does your book Truist Fan expand upon, whether it's purpose, or in building those meaningful relationships and those authentic relationships with clients or prospects that help propel business forward Great question.

Speaker 3:

I do want to dial back because I almost skipped that part about purpose, and you nailed it. Purpose for a lot of advisors is that relationship that they really want to have with that client, that deep, honest affinity that they gain because they are so focused on increasing the way that they deliver service and communication to their clients and they get more purpose out of the depth of those relationships, which is a great marketing tool.

Speaker 1:

It's fantastic because your clients love you and they have people that are similar to them and they just naturally give you word of mouth referrals and the people that show up they're all like, wow, you're similar to this other person and it just is like how did I get so? Lucky.

Speaker 3:

And that's a great place to be when you just, like you, just sit back and you want to pinch yourself, believe that you're having the fun and the success and all those things that can come with a business that's built around purpose and you're letting go of those things that are getting in your way, which actually takes me back to your question about the book.

Speaker 3:

So the book Truist Fan is a series of seven Truist Fan lessons, and one of the lessons emphasizes the importance of us understanding what part of our work is actually because it's so easy to work it is you're trying to do what things that you do in what you do are most important. If you're a successful, high-achieving financial advisor, you probably shouldn't be scheduling your own appointments and answering your own telephone. There are other people who are good at it that you can bring on your team and you can build them up so you can spend your time with those clients that you wanna spend time with, or those prospects that you want to meet so you can add them to your roster of clients. Or you're concentrating on building a team, or you want your business to eventually run in a way that it doesn't need you. So there's just so much there, but that starts by being very intentional about what's most important. Where should I be spending most of my time?

Speaker 1:

I follow a system called Entrepreneur's Operating System, or EOS for short, which is fairly popular nowadays, one of the concepts that I like. They talk about having rocks, or every 90 days you establish your rocks, and these are two to seven things that are big goals, objectives, priorities for the next 90 days, things that, if you're not intentional about it, are likely not to happen. But when you do have that clear focus and you establish them and you don't overwhelm yourself, right, it's two to seven what can you handle? What I find is that you become much more proactive versus reactive, because, to your point, I could come into my office and I could spend all day doing stuff. Then, at the end of the day, what did I accomplish?

Speaker 1:

I could spend all day doing stuff. Then, at the end of the day, what did I accomplish? And I tried to avoid those days. But when I start with okay, what are the rocks that I have for this quarter and, by extension, what do I need to do on those rocks this week in order to hit my goals, then it's much more purposeful and everything gets done. Right, it gets done naturally, but the big, important things is really what should be focused on. You were sharing with me some of the different pillars of your book. What are some of the other pillars of the book that?

Speaker 3:

The first pillar is that to be a truest fan, you must be your own truest fan, and so I find that many advisors that I meet, even those who have a high degree of success feel a little bit of the imposter syndrome that you know. They're pinching themselves because they don't believe they deserve what they've accomplished, as opposed to the pinching yourself when you are like you're crushing it, the mojo is right. So self-belief is a really important pillar. Mild and kind words go a long way. We live in a world of frowns. You walk down the street and people look away. They don't say hello. We think about that friend that we haven't talked to in months or years, and we think, gosh, I should call them or I should send them a text. You can do both of those things anytime you want to.

Speaker 3:

So I'm a big believer in sharing smiles, sharing kind words, and so that's one of the most important lessons in the book, and so, if you want to take action on that, what I want you to do is I want you to put five pebbles or five pennies in your right pocket Every time you smile at somebody, send somebody a note, give somebody an animal voice, move a penny from your right pocket to your left pocket and then, once you've gotten them all in your left pocket, move them all back to your right pocket. I think that's really important because I think, to be purposeful and impactful, we have to be aware of our environment and how we can impact it. You never know when that smile, that kind word just lifts somebody up and makes a difference, not only in their day but their life, because they're going through something that you don't know.

Speaker 1:

I think, my truest fan. I work from home and I have a dog. His name is Potato Chips, and I don't know that he speaks to me, but he smiles at me and I get energized as a result. I think that's why everyone loves dogs, right? Because they're just so friendly and they smile and they wag their tail and they're so excited to see you. Just as I'm thinking about this, though, I think in today's age, many of us are guilty, at least at times, of having our cell phones and just being on our phones and not paying as much attention as we should. So I get totally what you're saying.

Speaker 3:

To me the idea of spreading joy is really important.

Speaker 1:

I totally agree. I was recently doing an improv class, have you? Ever done improv before?

Speaker 3:

I have not taken a class, or I've not tried to improv myself, but I've actually taken a class at Second City in Chicago.

Speaker 1:

The reason I bring it up is one of the exercises we did. So it was a small group and one of the exercises they paired us off and they had us essentially hold hands and look deeply into each other's eyes and hold that for about two minutes and this was like with a stranger right it was opposite sex, stranger and the first time I did that it was so uncomfortable just that eye contact and holding the gaze, and then, of course, as you did a few more times, it got easier, but I was just amazed at how uncomfortable it felt the first time I did it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I can imagine I have not done that exercise, but I can promise you that I would be uncomfortable the first time I tried it.

Speaker 1:

So shifting gears slightly. We talked about your podcast. We talked about your existing book, which is Truist Fan. Now I hear that you're coming out with a new version of the book or the theme called Truist Fan Blueprint, in the next six months or so. Share with us what the new book is about. Where do you pick up, what are the additional insights or what's the new book about? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So the Truist Fan Blueprint is the EOS version of Truist Fan. It's a way to better implement the seven principles in the Truist Fan book and it's a system that helps, or a framework that helps somebody who is really trying to be more purposeful, more productive, to first understand what it is they really want out of life and just dream like crazy for the long run and then start pulling that back into what do I want life to look like in the next three years? What are my goals for the next 12 months? And then, as you suggested with the rocks, what am I going to work on the next three months? Because we can't work on a hundred things at the same time and get them all done. That's how we end up with unfinished projects.

Speaker 3:

I have a sprint process. That's part of the blueprint. That really helps my clients or somebody reading the book to know hey, these are the most important things I need to be doing over the next few months. They're going to lead me to my goals this year probably get there faster. They're going to lead me towards my vision for the next few years and are going to help me accomplish my biggest dreams, no matter how crazy they might seem. So it's a planning framework, a planning system that's based on the truest fan principles.

Speaker 1:

I've been implementing the EOS essentially in my company in the past couple of years, or some version of it, and I find it remarkable. I meet with a coach every week and we go over the rocks and action steps and everything Recently we're doing. He can tell my excitement because it's like, yeah, we're doing. I said we're going to do this, we did this Revenue's up significantly and it really works. I find that, of course, in addition to the framework, I think support and accountability is needed, because it's one thing in anything in life to have an idea and it's another thing to consistently execute it over time. How do you or how does your company help support your clients in not just the educational side, but in actually the implementation side, so that they can achieve the results?

Speaker 3:

I was thinking as we were talking about the smiles and kind words, and maybe I went a little too far on that. It might seem a little woo, but I love talking strategy and dreams and just letting my clients imagine. But a big part of what we do and that's why I created the blueprint is that you have to have a system for accountability and implementation. So the Truist Fan Blueprint wasn't the Truist Fan Blueprint when I first developed it. It was just my methodology for working with my clients. That helped me help them set goals, hold them accountable and have regular conversations, similar perhaps to the way that you work with your EOS coach. That's how my clients work with me, whether we're doing it in one-to-one work or doing it in group work. Accountability making sure there are true action items and not just goals and dreams is just so crucial, and they're easier to work on when there's purpose behind them.

Speaker 1:

It sounds like you synergistically tie everything together nicely, so I can see the value there, switching gears slightly. I want to ask you my company is essentially a publishing company and a marketing agency for authors, and so I love just to ask people that have written a book I think you wrote your book a couple of years ago For someone considering thinking about writing a book, what has been the biggest upside to you in writing your book from a business perspective? And then I would imagine that, since you're writing your second book, that you see value in the process. And now you're on to book number two. I don't know if you've written more books than that, Just maybe from a high level. As an author, what would you share with our audience in terms of the value that being an author has brought to you Great question.

Speaker 3:

First of all, I'd say if you're thinking about writing a book, stop thinking, just do it. There's no reason not to call Paul and get your book out there.

Speaker 1:

I did not pay him to say that.

Speaker 3:

I just truly believe that I actually wrote my first book 10 years ago. It's called Delivering the Ultimate Client Experience. It's more of a tactical book for financial advisors on how to elevate the level of client service they deserve, and for me that book was a really nice business card. It was a way to show my expertise and get my foot in the door. That is a very practical reason for having a book, and if that's the only reason you write a book, that's okay with me. Truist Fan is different. Back in the late 1970s I read a book called the One Minute Manager that a lot of people have read. It's again Blanchard book. It's a fable style book. It teaches important lessons by telling a story and when I read that book way back then I said one day I am going to write a one minute manager a fable style book Truist Fan was.

Speaker 3:

although it definitely helps me with my business, it was more of a passion project because I wanted to combine my love of my family, my love of God and my love of the Cleveland Indians Guardians into a series of lessons that, if I did nothing else, I could leave them with my daughters and they would know why their dad was as crazy as he is, because I have this core set of beliefs. So that was a passion project. But those lessons are lessons that I learned is being a financial advisor and coaching financial advisors. It helps me greatly in the work that I do. And then the blueprint is also told in a fable style but it goes back to being more practical. Like the first book has the element of the passion part of writing through his fan and to being an author is just it's fun to be able to say it honestly. But I know that those words helped me in my business and I know that the stories that I tell are having impact on people that I may never meet and I think that is that is really important.

Speaker 1:

What have you found has been most useful for you in terms of creating awareness for your book and just to create some context there? I don't believe in for 99% of people. There might be the 1% exception, but I don't believe in the purpose of having a book. Is book sales Not looking at royalties, don't care. The purpose of the book is thought, leadership, positioning and really to attract your ideal fit clients to you, as well as to have a very cohesive philosophy and structure that you can then teach or implement with your clients. All that being said, that's the writing and publishing side. But then the thing that a lot of financial advisors find struggle with is okay, I have my book. Now what? In your case and I know that you did this not as a financial advisor but more as a leadership coach I would say what did you find to be most useful in getting the message about your book out there and using it as a whether business development, marketing, positioning tool, etc.

Speaker 3:

That's exactly what. The last thing you said is a big part of how I've used it is. Being an author gives you authority because you've taken the time to write a story about how you do what you do. I have actually been the publisher of a couple of books for my client, and so I've walked through helping two clients. It's not something that I do all the time, it's just situational. What I found is and I see this with advisors all the time they have great stories, they have great accesses for helping their clients, they have a way of talking, a language that they use that is unique to them and their positioning, and the book is a way to bring that out and to share it. That's why I think when you write a book, it ought to be worth reading.

Speaker 1:

And when you say that, tell me what you mean by that, because I get this as well. Some people just say, oh, being able to say I'm an author is good. I'm like, am I taking that as? No, that's useful. But the magic of a book is it actually gets read. And part of our process, which we call the short book formula, it's a book that can be read in one to two hours so that it's manageable and your ideal reader, slash prospect, slash client will actually take the time to read it cover to cover. So that gets into storytelling writing quality, all those things. Because so that gets into storytelling writing quality, all those things.

Speaker 3:

Because to me, where the magic happens is when someone actually takes the time to read your book, absorb the ideas and that's why it should be well written and it should be a story that's really telling your own voice, because it should be something. When somebody picks it up, maybe they flip to the middle and just figure I'm going to see if this is really worth reading.

Speaker 3:

And the next thing they've read from the middle to the end and gone back to the beginning because they need to figure it all out. So it should be a story we're telling, because we all have stories that are worth. We all have very special ways that we serve our clients, whether we're coaches and authors or we're financial advisors, helping people through their financial life journey, or their personal life journey and so taking the time to articulate that is really important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think you nailed it. Is that why I like working with financial advisors so much, is that typically, especially the more successful ones. They have stories, they have experiences, they have unique positioning. It's somewhat magical when you can capture that in a book and amplify that out there so that I call it your salesperson in print, right? Imagine owning yourself, having the best version of yourself really, and having people be exposed to that. And then, when they show up on your doorstep or your Zoom room, you may have just met them for the first time, but they're already aware of your ideas, your philosophy, your approach. It's just. It's such a game changer in so many different ways.

Speaker 3:

I love that. The first book that I helped a client write this goes back probably 10 or 15 years ago now is called the 18 Common Sense Rules for a Successful Retirement. I had a client, ron Dickinson, great advisor, who had diarrhea of the fingers. Some people just like have diarrhea of the mouth. They can't stop talking. You might accuse me of that after this podcast, but when I would ask him a question, the email that he would send back was pages long.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I haven't heard that before. I've heard diarrhea of the mouth, but not diarrhea of the fingers. And immediately one person comes to my mind where I get exactly what you're saying.

Speaker 3:

But he had these very wrong beliefs in mistakes that people were making when it came to retirement planning. So I said you need to write a book. And he goes I can't do that. And I said, yes, you can. And I literally would just ask him a question, get him to fire off an answer. It was something that was prompting what I knew to be his beliefs about retirement planning and when we got to the point where it was getting redundant, I said we have enough rules. Now we need to start editing it.

Speaker 3:

And that's what we did and it's been a major driver of business for him an incredible amount of business for him, but when he's still to this day, when he talks to some of his clients, they will remind him that the reason they worked together was because they can't name the number, but they learned a lesson or two from him, from those 18 that has made a difference in their lives as they've built out their retirement plans or moved towards being retired. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

As we wrap up, a couple of final questions. First one is there any question that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share with our audience? Anything that's top of mind or in your world?

Speaker 3:

I guess I would just very briefly re-echo if you haven't stopped to take the time to think about what it is you really want, who you are and why you do what you do, carve out some quiet time, turn off the cell phone, shut the computer down and just journal on that and dream about who it is you are and what you want to be and become, and the way that you serve your clients or where you're there for your family, the causes that you care about.

Speaker 3:

I just think that's so important. It can make a huge difference in just setting direction and tone and making us more authentic versions of ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Final question for someone that either wants to get a copy of your book or simply learn more about you or your services, what is the best place or places for them to go to?

Speaker 3:

Okay, two things. One, you can just go to truestfancom and on the website you can learn about my coaching. It links out to be able to get a copy of the Truest Fan book. Or you can go to truestfancom forward slash scorecard. I call it a business optimization scorecard, and it walks advisors through my process for coaching by helping them answer questions about themselves and their businesses so they can create a score. These are areas that I'm doing really well and I need to do more of them. These are some areas where I have some gaps and I need to spend some time there too, and so get the scorecard. That'd be another great way to connect.

Speaker 1:

It was great talking today. I enjoyed the conversation and I'm looking forward to being a guest on your podcast in the near future.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

I think it's just around the corner. All right Sounds good, Paul.