Organically Growing To $800M AUM In Less Than A Decade By Investing In Educational Marketing: #FASuccess Ep 503 With David Brooks

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 503rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is David Brooks. David is the founder of Retire SMART, an RIA based in Omaha, Nebraska, that oversees approximately $800 million in assets under management for 1,000 client households.

What's unique about David, though, is how he has achieved rapid growth in part by investing in multiple marketing tactics, including in-person educational events and an extensive network of radio, television, YouTube, and podcast content.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how David committed to spending 25% of his revenue on marketing during his first two years in business (and still spends approximately 12% of revenue on marketing today), why David is willing to continue to invest in legacy marketing tactics that have a lower return on investment than newer ones he implements, and how David invests 20% of his marketing budget in pure branding activities, both to expand name recognition of his firm and because of the synergies these activities have with his marketing funnels that have a more direct ROI.

We also talk about how David has found success by holding in-person educational events (including traditional lunch and dinner seminars as well as classroom-based discussions in his firm’s offices), how David built a large audience through radio and television shows (which have now expanded to include a podcast, YouTube channel, and social media content), and how David analyzes key metrics to assess the return he gets from each of the marketing investments he makes.

And be certain to listen to the end, where David shares how taking a tax-centric planning approach allows him to demonstrate hard-dollar value for his pre-retiree, retiree, and business owner clients, how David decided to launch his own ETFs both to allow smaller-dollar clients to access his active investments strategies and as a potential profit center from external investors, and how David has navigated the bottlenecks that can come with rapid firm growth.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about marketing through educational content, measuring the ROI of marketing investments, or how to manage a rapidly growing firm, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with David Brooks.

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