As the world becomes increasingly digital, the barrier to get one’s ideas out and in front of others becomes lower and lower. In the financial sector in particular, this has led to an open floodgate of financial tips and advice. Many financial advisors have found that sharing their own expertise and marketing their intellectual property are great ways to establish themselves as dependable, trustworthy sources. But with so much content available and from so many sources, it can be challenging for advisors to decide how to start their own process of sharing information and what to share with their target audience.
In our 95th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss why advisors may be their own worst enemy when it comes to content creation, why having a system to notice and track ideas is more important than choosing only the best ideas to share, and how commitment (and a good systematic process) may actually be the key to creating good content consistently.
When it comes to creating content, advisors often face mental roadblocks that keep them from making progress. Examples include: expert’s curse (i.e., underestimating how much knowledge and expertise one actually has), familiarity bias (i.e., overestimating the extent that certain topics are understood), and imposter’s syndrome (i.e., experiencing a lack of confidence despite the years of training and work) are all commonly experienced obstacles skewing the judgment that many advisors have about their own ideas and expertise, often leaving them feeling that their (really good) ideas are not unique or interesting enough.
However, the best way to overcome these roadblocks is often to focus less on the critical process of finding only the best ideas to share, and instead to focus more on developing a consistent process to capture, store, and organize all ideas – even if those ideas consist of just simple phrases or sentences. Because when it comes to content creation, the more important goal is not so much about finding ‘good’ ideas to share (as advisors have plenty of those, even though they may not always acknowledge that they do), but more about creating habits to help them develop their style and confidence, and to engage with their audience on a consistent basis. Which means that having a reliable system to record their ideas to serve as an ‘intellectual property flywheel’ can serve as a valuable source for potential content for whatever the advisor’s preferred content strategy is – whether it be to release a weekly blog post, monthly podcast, book, or something else entirely.
Ultimately, the key point for advisors to create good content is more about developing a sensible process to capture, store, and organize their ideas… and then having the courage to create sharable content based on those ideas regardless of whether they think the ideas are good enough! As the advisor who commits themselves to creating, again and again, will find that their creativity, digital voice, and audience will grow and improve with time. Taking the first step to establish a process that allows advisors to systematically capture all of their ideas, though, is what opens the door for them to eventually make their best, most creative work!
Leave a Reply