John Bowen of CEG Worldwide Tells Advisors How to Get an Unfair Advantage - Video Chat with Marie Swift

In this Swift Chat video conversation, Marie Swift of Impact Communications speaks with John Bowen of CEG Worldwide. The topic: How advisors who have positioned themselves as pandemic experts are getting an unfair, competitive advantage + how the opportunity to capture additional assets now has never been greater.

Wake up, advisors. Whatever you do over the next six months could allow you to have the best next three years, ever. John Bowen calls it the "Opportunity Zone" and there could be a  huge impact if you decide to step up now.  John also offers a number of free resources if you go to a special sub-page on the CEG website, which is www.CEGWorldWide.com/FreeBook -- but don't be fooled by the URL, there is MUCH more than "just" a free book waiting for you  there.

Frankly, you'd be a bit daft if you didn't go there right now and download your free resources. And if you don't watch this video (or read the transcript below), you will really be missing out. Stop what you are doing and invest 20 minutes right now -- you'll also get to see John demonstrating his live-stream presentation skills!

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18-Minutes of Wisdom Right Here

    The ability to capture additional assets now has never been greater. Whatever you do over the next six months is going to allow you to have the best next three years, ever. This is really unbelievable opportunity if we all rise to the occasion. You've got to ask yourself if not you, who's going to do it? And if not now, when are you going to do it? The advisors we’re working with have already picked up billions and billions of dollars in the pandemic. It's been amazing."   ~ John Bowen, CEG Worldwide

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Marie Swift: Welcome back everybody to another Swift Chat. I'm delighted to have John Bowen of CEG Worldwide. John, where in the heck are you today?
 
John Bowen: Well, I am at global headquarters for CEG and, fortunately, we are a virtual company, so it's in Silicon Valley, in my pool house and we've been doing this for about 20 years. I have the privilege of 50 people working together, but we've been doing what is now being called remote work for a long time Marie, and fortunately were very effective at doing it long before everybody else had to get there.
 
Marie: I know! I feel so fortunate. My company has been virtual before virtual was cool. So we didn't miss a beat, other than feeling like we got socked in the nose with, oh, now we have to homeschool our kids, and our kids are coming home from college, and now there are rowdy dogs in the house and all that stuff. But I mean business is good for us and for many of our clients. I'm wondering what you're hearing. You do a lot of work with advisors. What's working out there? What are some of the pain points? What are you hearing?
 
John: Well you know what, I'd love to do. I end up talking a lot on a whiteboard. So, with your permission, I'll go ahead and share my whiteboard, and this is something that I'm finding really helps everybody frame what's going on. I want to share with the whiteboard and let me kind of set the stage – in fact, you already did. You know, each of us every individual really around the world all 7 billion plus of us got punched in the nose, mouth, the stomach, whatever you want to call it, and we didn't like it, by the pandemic. This is, I always think of Mike Tyson, you know, very few things that I refer to Mike Tyson as a quote, but he always had a quote that everybody's got a great plan until you get punched in the mouth, and that's what happened. And you know, I want you to think of that as the origin. We have the Y axis as the economy and then we have time as the X axis and I'm going to draw the economy and, you know, none of us know how this is all going to turn out.
 
I'm kind of given a more of a U shaped and I want to have everybody think about, you know, kind of the last as we're doing this now, we've had, you know, really, a good solid for almost five months of the pandemic. And I want you to think about this is, let's say, four to five here depending on where you are, months as an opportunity for all of us for reset for growth. All of us reacted differently to this, I want to tell you, you know, from my standpoint, I don't think I've ever teared up as much. I mean, the number of people that have been hurt tremendously on this. And obviously, the time of the recording we've had about 150,000 deaths. I mean, this is very real.

HOW TO GAIN AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE OVER YOUR PEERS

But out of that what we're seeing is, let's say we're right here, and again, I wish I had some great vision that I could draw this to scale. But I want to talk about where we're going with this, and what we're seeing with advisors, because during this "reset for growth" we went ahead, my partner Russ Alan Prince and I, really spent a lot of time and our thought was to help our coaching clients and we have the privilege of coaching, I think we're the largest in the US, certainly at the high end and we have the privilege of coaching all over the world advisors. Our thought was to help stabilize their practices because 15 days a market dropped over 20%, one of the quickest downturns ever, and what we wanted to do is stabilize that so they kept their clients and then positioned themselves as a pandemic experts to be able to really get an unfair, competitive advantage.

What's happened is that with what's going on the world, particularly, the volatile market, but mostly recovered, is the ability to capture additional assets now has never been greater.
 
So, if you can get comfortable with video you can do exceptionally well. I mean the opportunities, no longer we geographically isolated. Now normally as an advisor, and I was an advisor in Silicon Valley, we ended up growing our practice in the late 90s, a couple billion dollars and were the largest advisor at Schwab, at the time when we sold it, we had a couple billion dollars then. It's just continued to grow and so the opportunity was great in Silicon Valley but now you don't have to be in Silicon Valley, you could be anywhere. Clients don't care and we're all learning how to use video extremely well.
 
THE OPPORTUNITY ZONE IS REAL

Now if we continue, what I want you to think about over the next, I'm going to say, let's call it the next six months or so, each and every one of us has a huge opportunity for what I'm going to call the Opportunity Zone. And what this is a period where most of your peers, unfortunately, Marie, most of the  financial advisors are going to wait until you know there's a vaccine. When things become clearer and I'd love to say it's going to happen in six months. I don't know. No one knows that. But what I do know is that this is going to last for a while.
 
This is a great time to really grow and the reason for that is that growth because of our great business, this is what makes us so good. We get to do well by doing well. That over the next three years, whatever you do over the next six months is going to allow you to have the best next three years, ever. And what we want to do and let me just kind of pull this here is there's three groups that we want to focus on.

THREE GROUPS ON WHICH TO FOCUS
 
The first is our clients. And the idea here with clients is that we have a real opportunity. We want them to be comfortable. I'll go over how I'm scripting them and I'm going to give you the scripts as well. We'll give you a link that you can get, a workbook that Russ and I put together on building demand for you and your expertise. It's phenomenal. It has scripts for each of these three areas. On how you can really reach out and build a great relationship with your client to serve them exceptionally well. And, to also have them want to introduce you to the people that you know that they really care about that they love, to get a second opinion and with you.
 
The second thing is the prospective clients. And these prospective clients are just amazing. These are people over the last three years, we're finding If you reach out to them, these are the people came in your office, you met with them, they went over the financials, for whatever reason they effectively said, not now. You go ahead and you can reach out to them using the scripts that we're going to give you so that you can have about 30% come to you virtually And if you use the methods in the elite wealth manager book 80% of them will become clients. That's huge. This is why I think it's such a great opportunity.
 
The last group I want to talk about, Marie, is this whole Centers of Influence. What we're talking about here is this concept of where we have Centers of Influence that are accountants, attorneys, and other professionals. What's happening is they are struggling in business today. They don't have the reoccurring revenue of assets under management. So, they are going ahead and they're trying to figure out what to do. They are having a lot of conversations but not a lot of billable activities. And to the extent that you reach out to them, and use the scripts that we're giving you, you can have some amazing strategic partnerships that come out of. We call them the best client partnerships, where they introduce you to five of their best clients over the next twelve months because you're providing them so much value.
 
So, that's the real opportunity Marie, I mean just we're seeing that over and over again.

FREE RESOURCES FOR THE SWIFT TRIBE

Marie:  Fantastic information and ideas John! I want to make sure that everybody who's tuned in knows how to get the resources that you're providing. So how do they do that?
 
John: Well, what we want them to do, and let me just grab my whiteboard really quick, if you go to our website, which is www.cegworldwide.com/freebook. So that will be our homepage for our company. But I want you to go do a forward slash and then remember, free book. And you're going to get a whole bunch of bonuses.
 
The first thing you're going to do is you'll get The Elite Wealth Manager book. This is where we go over the three things, three big strategies, and the nine accelerators that advisors who are consistently netting a million dollars or more, what they're doing as they're serving their clients extremely well with wealth management. We call these individuals, the Elite Wealth Managers. The book is the Elite Wealth Manager. So, it's a phenomenal book. You're going to love it. You get immediate download and I'm going to mail you a free copy of the book as well.
 
But the, biggest bonus, that book is great, but that strategy and these strategies are all working right now, but I'm going to go tactical. So, my partner Russ Alan Prince and I do, I think it's a 72-minute video, where we go ahead and we go through and we really walk through the workbook that I'm going to give you, "Building Demand For You and Your Expertise," that has the scripts for each of those groups. You know, going back to the clients, the prospective clients, and the Centers of Influence, so that you can serve them well and really make a difference. We walk through a process that is really powerful. It's a four-step process where you start by tuning in.

FOUR-STEP PROCESS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
 
Tune in means impactful listening, less than 10% of the time you should be talking. We give you the exact question so you can do that. So, tune in first. It's all about listening, discovery are the questions. You're going to ask two areas, health, how they're doing, how their families doing? I know you probably have done that already, hopefully you have with each of these groups, but this is where I show you how to do it even more impactful. And you can do this, you know, really during the pandemic all the time. We all want to have those conversations. But, not only the individual you're talking about, but everyone they care about. And then the second is finance and that's not the market. What it is, it's all about, whether they're entrepreneurs, their business, if it's their professionals and we're going to ask them about their practice and if they're employed, their job and a series of questions around that. Where they are now. How concerned are they going forward? What are they going to do if this last for a long time? What if they're working with an entrepreneur like or a practice, their clients? We have all those scripts for you. And I got to tell you, with your clients, you'll be able to really get clarity. So, you're going to be tuned in, impactful listening.
 
Second, we're going to go ahead and ask host discovery questions.
 
Third is empathy. We're going to share with them that we get them.
 
And the fourth part we're there to serve, it's not to sell anything but what we find is there's opportunities that will present and if you are aligned the fourth part is that alignment. If you're aligned with your service, go ahead, and provide that. And if not, but you can help them by a referral, to a service, or a professional, that's the value added. We're just having these conversations, Marie, and the advisors we’re working with have already picked up billions and billions of dollars in the pandemic. It's been amazing.

VIRTUAL  CONFERENCES YOU  WON'T WANT TO MISS

Marie: Yes, it is amazing, and I know you've got some virtual conferences coming up. I'm excited to see your new technology. I mean, look at you with all your white boarding – your video skills are phenomenal . One point I'd make for our viewers today, our listeners, or however you're watching, you know you may be listening or reading the transcript, you have got to get good at technology and you have got to get good on camera. Get over yourself. Right?
 
John: Yeah, well, you know, if ever there was someone who had a face made for radio it’s me. So, it's not about how you look, its that people want your perspective. You know, Marie, one of the missions that we have at CEG is, we believe financial advisors, each and every one can build an amazing life of significance. And, to us, is they can take care of the people they love, the causes they care about, make a difference. This is really unbelievable opportunity if we all rise to the occasion. We can do it by serving fewer but wealthier client extremely well. And then, we also believe you can do it faster with less effort than you ever thought possible. What's going to happen as you go and download the book, you're going to end up seeing this hierarchy of advisor success. And this is really powerful.
 
You know, we have all the different levels because of the time, I'm going to just say, what we want to do is, no matter where you are, and you'll see in the book is, how can we help you accelerate. That's what we're going to share. Now going back Marie, what we're doing is we we've had the privilege and I was an advisor for most of my professional career, but for really the last 20 years I've had the privilege of working with top advisors and those aspiring to be top advisors all over the world.
 
We decided to put together quarterly conferences. We partnered with Financial Advisor magazine and we want to take it and ratchet up a bar even more and we're going to be showing advisors, how they can use all this, but most importantly how they can accelerate up this Hierarchy of Advisor Success to, no matter where they are, where they want to go and create some tremendous value serving clients. Rescuing perspective clients and helping COIs really grow their business.
 
Definitely when you're on our website take a look at the next upcoming virtual conference because they're amazing. I'm just amazed, as you are, Marie, with today's technology. I grew up with it. I'm in Silicon Valley but, I'm a small-town boy from upstate New York farm area, very rural. Big town of 4000. So, I feel like a kid in a candy store that showed up at the right time.

EVERYONE IS COUNTING ON YOU!

The pandemic is terrible. We've all seen so many people hurt so bad. We look at our leadership, politically, economically, and socially. I don't care your persuasion, it's hard to believe how bad that's going. Each of us has a choice to step up now and I want you to certainly step up one to one with clients, perspective clients, and Centers of Influence. But don't forget there's a huge Opportunity Zone and leverage these tools and join us at one of the video conferences where we do every other week ones and then the virtual events that we're doing every quarter. I think you will get so many ideas that you can make a huge impact. And, everybody's counting on ya!
 
Marie: Absolutely. Well, John I am so grateful for your time today and that you would come and share all of this with my tribe. Blessings to you. I wish we could have a virtual hug. In fact, it just seems like yesterday we were in San Diego together, having lunch at the T3 Conference, man. We'll be back doing that at some point.
 
John: I do remember a nice hug between us and there are certain things you can't do virtually but this too shall pass. But in the meantime, never forget the Opportunity Zone and the impact that we all can have if we decide to step up now. You've got to ask yourself if not you, who's going to do it? And if not now, when are you going to do it? This is a great time. Go to CEGWorldwide.com/freebook, download all of this, and go out and make a huge impact.
 
Marie: With that, we will say goodbye. Thanks again.

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