Bigger Picture

West Coast Bound

I’m somewhere over the western part of the country on my way to Santa Monica to participate in an advisor summit at the Dimensional Funds Advisors HQ for the next couple of days. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Santa Monica to visit DFA—the last time I was there it was late 2015 and I was just getting RLSWM off the ground. I’m excited to experience some warm weather and sun since spring is taking its time coming to Fishers, Indiana.

It’s not just the weather I’m excited about; I’m also excited to see some friends like Peter Lazaroff, Phil Huber, and Taylor Schulte, finally meet others like Jude Boudreaux, who I’ve “known” from Twitter for years, in person and meet a bunch of other advisors doing great work. On my way out of town Wednesday evening I’ll get to hang with my good buddy Blake Street for a little bit—what a trip!

Back to the point of the trip.

The Advisor Media Summit is basically a study group of advisors leveraging different forms of media—both traditional and social. Some of the advisors have written books, other are on TV and radio, and some are contributing via blogs, videos, and podcasts. It’ll be interesting to learn how others are sharing their stories and educating their clients (and future clients). This group is just an extension of the FinTwit community—advisors whom in the past would have probably considered each other competitors, but today view each other a colleagues working together to fight the good fight.

The more we can share with each other, the more we are able expand our reach to more people—either by content or growing our client base. If we all improve, everyone benefits: our firms, our advisors, our clients, the public and, our profession.

I’ll be heading a round table discussion about YouTube and how advisors can leverage the platform—I’ve grown very fond of YouTube lately. I’m still not 100% comfortable in front of the camera, but I’m better than I was on Day One. I can create a video, edit, and distribute it much faster than I can write a blog post—sometimes things needs to be written, but other times video gets the job done.  I’ll let you in on a little secret I’ll share with my group—video can be used on so many platforms; pound for pound it’s the best medium to use. I can turn one video into not only a YouTube video, but it can also become a podcast episode, edited down to an Amazon Skill, transcribed into a written post, and chopped up into segments for short video highlights. It can be posted to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, iTunes, this blog, and my Alexa Skill.

All. From. One. Recording.

There’s your #Free Jewlery (shoutout as always to Tyrone Ross Jr. for the hashtag we’ve all grown to love).

I’ll share some closing thoughts on the way home Wednesday night—I’m taking the red eye home. I’ll also hopefully have some good videos to share from the trip as well; I’m going to be with some extremely bright financial advisors and I’d be foolish to let the opportunity to get some of them on camera pass.

Content wins.

Warning: Explicit Lyrics

Disclaimer: Nothing on this blog should be considered advice, or recommendations. If you have questions pertaining to your individual situation you should consult your financial advisor. For all of the disclaimers, please see my disclaimers page.