Advisors, Get Ready to Learn the Tips You Need To Grow Your Business with Lara Galloway

VOICE OVER: [00:00:00] Welcome to the FAST Podcast, Financial Advisor Strategy Talks with Lara Galloway, head of advisor education programs at White Glove. Lara provides advisors with the opportunity to hear from some of the best minds in the business. Follow along to learn quick tips to help you grow your business from gaining new leads to keeping current clients engaged and everything in between.

Now onto the show. 

Aric Johnson: Hello, and welcome to the FAST Podcast with your host, Lara Galloway from White Glove. Lara, how are you? 

Lara Galloway: I'm great. How are you, Aric?

Aric Johnson: I'm doing fantastic. I'm so excited. This is your inaugural podcast. 

Lara Galloway: Exciting times and new adventure. Can't wait. 

Aric Johnson: Yes, and I know that we're going to talk a lot about White Glove, and about your history there.

And we're going to get to know you personally, but before we get started, we really need to ask the question: the FAST Podcast. It's a great name. What does fast stand for? 

Lara Galloway: Financial advisor strategy talks, and we hope we do a lot of good in a short amount of time helping advisors figure [00:01:00] out some tips and tricks for being successful.

Aric Johnson: Okay. That's great that you've got a broad audience. Let's talk a little bit about White Glove. Is that okay? 

Lara Galloway: Absolutely.

Aric Johnson: All right. So how is White Glove founded and what is its primary purpose?

Lara Galloway: Well, White Glove was founded in 2015 by three financial advisors who were buddies and running their own practice, still running their own practice today.

And a fun fact is White Glove initially was called Social Security 567. And you may think, where did they get such a catchy title? Wow. Yeah. Okay. So for financial advisors listening out there, they might be clued into this because they gave that name because when they first started the very first workshop that they started doing as financial advisors, they started doing social security workshops and in the social security world, there are actually 567 ways for a married couple filing jointly to file for social security. 

So that's the [00:02:00] name that we started with. And then after a while they went ahead and changed the name as they expanded their mission and their goal to do more workshops, not just social security, but to do more workshops, to help bring financial education to everyone, and to also expand the way they reach their audiences.

You see Aric back when they founded, they were doing seminars at libraries, community centers, community colleges, and they were buying postcard mailers and sending out those mailers via direct mail. And they had gotten great success over the years. They built their entire company through that, and they have a little over half a billion in assets, under management.

So they've been doing well in the last 25 or 30 years, but they saw a decline in the direct mail results. So they were spending the same amount of money to market and advertise about their workshops, but got really declining results. They started dabbling in social media and figured out how to find their audience on social media and started getting really good results where people were showing up because they saw their ad on [00:03:00] social media.

And then other advisors were asking, well, how are you doing this? And so that's really how White Glove was born. It was born in the base of the invest wise financial advisory firm that is run by our advisors here and our founders. And so we've grown since then. We've got about 120 employees at this point.

Aric Johnson: Oh, wow. 

Lara Galloway: Yeah. And we have done over 30,000 events and educated over 500,000 consumers and it's all across the US and Canada. So it's been pretty, a pretty nice long trajectory.

Aric Johnson: That’s huge. And I mean, then you talk about mailers and it's funny because I remember my parents getting them. I didn't get so many because you know, when you first get married and you're first starting out, you're usually pretty broke.

Nobody wanted to contact me with those mailers, but for anybody who's had a house in the last few years, we would get inundated two or three a day postcards saying “Hey, I'd like to buy your house.” So I think anybody in this generation that owns a house knows exactly what kind of mailers you're talking [00:04:00] about.

Little postcards that plug your mailbox up? It leads me to a question because with the pandemic, it almost feels like it was a long time ago, but it really wasn't, and we're still not through it but that had to have changed the face of what you were doing because people couldn't get together.

White Glove was founded on like these seminars that was all in person, and it doesn't seem like you could do that. 

Lara Galloway: Well, you're exactly right. I mean, our entire business model, Aric was built on doing seminars in person, in public places in gathering. Just like you're saying we weren't allowed to do that anymore.

So many business owners out there and the financial advisors that we talked to, we had to pivot our business and figure out how to reach our audience in a new way, in a virtual way. And so we had been doing seminars forever and we thought about webinars, but we never really got around to doing it because I think all things considered.

Most people, a lot of people [00:05:00] still prefer in person eye contact. You know, if we can do it, but when that's not available, what are you going to do? So we had to learn how to offer webinars. And we made a real hard pivot from seminars to webinars during COVID because our clients were begging us.

So guys, I have no way to talk to people. I don't know how to get in touch and we didn't just help them figure out how to do their seminars in person. We also helped them figure out how to do virtual appointments, which we'll get into later about the advisor education that we do.

And we were doing at that point and continue doing, but we pivoted, we started offering webinars. The first several dozen were not good. A lot of tech issues and a lot to learn, but we did learn and we applied the learning really fast because it was a real urgent need.

I'm really proud to say from there we [00:06:00] learned so much about best practices to offer in the industry to not just do good lighting, good sound, good presentation, good content, but how to be personable, how to compel people to want to sign up for an appointment with you and how to create a slide deck.

That's actually going to walk people down the path to saying, “wow, this is really interesting and compelling stuff.” And it's a bit more complicated than I feel like I can handle on my own. So it does make sense that I'd want to meet with a financial advisor whose been educating me on these topics. Now I could use some more advice.

So to date, we have done over 4,000 webinars. We were the first in the industry to get out in front of this during COVID and start doing this. 

I shamelessly will agree because you guys did pivot and that many, that's a huge amount. That's, nothing to shake a stick at.

Aric Johnson: Seriously. You talk about doing this education, you talk about putting these seminars on. What role does education play at White Glove itself? [00:07:00] 

Lara Galloway: You know, our mantra here is financial education is everything. I'm very passionate about that. I personally have a real stake in the game when it comes to educating.

And it's kind of a part of my personality and who I've always been. When I started with White Glove, this is something that was so exciting to me. I'm always a learner. Always. I love learning. It doesn't matter what topic it is. I can't even tell you. I just moved my son to Montana State University for his freshman year in dorm.

And we took a 4,100 mile road trip to get him there and back. And my husband and I in the car whoever's driving, the other person has to entertain so his entertainment for me was educating me on things like, silage as we were driving down the road. 

But back to financial education. We really are passionate about educating advisors and we keep learning new things that we need to teach advisors. So [00:08:00] yes, White Glove educates our community. We're passionate about bringing financial education to everybody out there so they can make empowered decisions and good financial choices for their future.

But we're also very passionate about bringing that education to our advisors, because what we learned Aric with webinars, our advisors were doing the best they can, but people don't know what they don't know. And for instance, with webinars, some people really didn't have presentation skills down. They didn't know anything about lighting and audio.

They didn't know anything about the making a good call to action. They didn't know how to take the people that attended or registered for one of their workshops and follow up with them properly and convert that to a meeting so that they could talk to them more about an opportunity to work together.

If that was a fit, they didn't know that they didn't know these things. But because we were on there doing the White Glove thing, where we sit on the webinar, we produce, we prepare, we [00:09:00] test for our webinars while we were doing all that. And we're having all these amazing conversations. Again, you talk about a silver lining from COVID.

We had so many conversations with our advisors as we were prepping and producing their webinars and practicing with them where they're telling us what their struggles are. They're telling us what they don't know. That gave us that opportunity to turn that into a curriculum. We've created an amazing curriculum to date.

We have a long history, many years now. I think five years of hosting our in person, big annual event called host university. And that's because we call our advisors who present workshops. We call them a workshop host. So host universities, when we gather peers in person and we share great ideas about how to do better. What are the things that advisors are doing to be success?

And then we also created a virtual academy. It's called our White Glove University, where we offer several times a month webinars and peer tope, round [00:10:00] tables for learning where we go over a different topic, whether it's from presentations to practice management, to technology tools. All kinds of stuff like that to help people be better.

So we don't just educate the public. We try to educate our advisors and bring all the knowledge that we are gathering being in this position that we're in to see what advisors need to hear, what they're struggling with, and we create with industry experts. We have premier partnerships with coaches in the industry that are second to none, and they're phenomenal.

So we bring in people that are experts and we share as fast as we get that knowledge. We turn around and share it back out with our advisors. 

I love that. I don't know any professional that wouldn't agree that iron sharpening iron is one of the best ways to learn and having those round table discussions.

Aric Johnson: I think that's fantastic, I will throw one other thing out there. I don't know if you've ever seen a video where there's a kid on social media saying “Hey dad, if I get 5,000 likes, will you buy me a new bike?” Things like that happens. So I'm going to throw [00:11:00] down a gauntlet. If we have a thousand people email in and ask you for a Hey podcast, would you do it?

Lara Galloway: Oh, yeah. 

Aric Johnson: Okay. We need a thousand people to email in and ask for a hay based podcast, all about hay. But so we got to see if that number comes in. 

Lara Galloway: You'll also make my husband so proud. Thank you. Let's do that guys support me here.  

Aric Johnson: Yes, absolutely. Well, I'd like to pivot now and start asking you some personal questions.

So the audience can get to know you because you are the host of this podcast and you've got so much content to deliver and I think the audience needs to get to know you a little bit. 

Lara Galloway: Great. 

Aric Johnson: All right. So let's, let's start with your history with White Glove specifically.

Tell me a little bit more about your experience and what your role is in the company. 

Lara Galloway: So my role in the company today is the head of our financial education. Again, kind of like what we were just talking about. I'm interested in educating everybody as much as possible all the time. My history with White Gloves started about four and a half years [00:12:00] ago.

I came out of running my own coaching and consulting business for women entrepreneurs who started their own companies and were trying to figure out how to run them. I had to I learn everything from sales, marketing, production, operating training teams, hiring, firing, launch, exit ideation, whatever it was, that's the kind of stuff that I had to do for 12 years and then work with people on things like time management and powerful communication and leadership skills, because these are things that don't come easily.

Two business owners. Right? So I took all of that. I did that for 12 years while I was raising my kids and they needed me a lot. So it gave me that freedom and flexibility that I needed in that time of my life. And then I got to the point where I was just like, okay, the kids don't need me as much anymore.

And I've been coaching with these business owners and teaching them how to run their businesses and kind of being a silent partner in a whole bunch of companies. I loved it so much, but I really was [00:13:00] ready to learn and grow myself. And I wanted to be a part of something bigger than just my own thing.

And so I reached out to a couple of friends in the social media world, which is where I spent a lot of time because I ran my entire business on social media. I reached out to a couple of friends, got an interview with the CEO of White Glove at the time and a couple of the founders and we just hit off immediately and they said, “please join us, and could you also write up a job description because we know you should join us, but we're not exactly sure what you should do.”

 And I said, “Great. Let's do something with business development. I would love to help you guys grow into some areas that you aren't currently doing.” So I helped out with getting us into some new verticals, expanding some new topics and even bringing us over into Canada.

And that was fun. Then I did, again, bringing home the whole idea of training. Once I created a new topic or a new vertical or moved into a new country, there was a huge [00:14:00] gap in skills or in knowledge about how do we work here? How do we work with these people? How do we talk about this topic? So I've always been training our sales team or training our product team or training our advisors, how to do whatever we need to do for that new vertical.

So I've worked in the buisness development, the sales client relations, whenever we had to pivot with with COVID from seminars to webinars, I had been tapped on the shoulder to be the webinar quarterback about two weeks before COVID hit. 

Aric Johnson: Oh boy. 

Lara Galloway: So then webinars were the only thing we did it wasn't just a pet project.

Then I ran round up being the head of that and on the product team and headed up product for a while. And I've kind of gone full circle and now I'm heading up just an overall umbrella for all things financial education. 

That is fantastic. I love the fact that you help take the company international and this podcast is international, so it fits right in.

Aric Johnson: And that's exciting [00:15:00] to me because you're going to be able to reach all the folks that you're already talking with, and they're going to be able to hear more and have more education and get to know your guests. That's fantastic. That's a lot of fun. 

Lara Galloway: And one point you just made about that too.

The reason I'm excited about this podcast, you know, when I was running my company, I did about 300 episodes of a podcast and it was the number one lead gen source for me to get my teaching, my coaching, my personality out to my people. It helped, it just was such a great connecting tool. What I'm so excited with the FAST Podcast, Aric is that little short snippets in a podcast of tips that can help somebody do better and be better.

On demand. Anytime you need it. That's the kind of education I really want to get out there. So I'm super excited about this portable format. So thanks for making this possible.

Aric Johnson: This is you. This is all you, I'm not making. I'm just sitting here asking you questions. You're making this possible completely.

And I don't know if the audience can tell, obviously they can, because they're listening to this. You're extremely passionate about this. So what makes you so [00:16:00] passionate about your current role? Because you've done a lot of different things, wore a lot of different hats in the company.

Lara Galloway: I always say, if you look backwards and I'm 51 today, so if you look back, it's not my happy birthday birthday, but it's not my birthday.

I was just going to say, it sounds like that's what I'm saying. So I'm 51 as of this moment. But my birthday's in December. I'll let you know, you can send me a gift. 

Aric Johnson: All right. Deal.

Lara Galloway: But, all of these years, If I look back and I look at the trajectory backwards, it's a straight line. Now, if I were in the present going forward to today, it didn't look as straight, but when I look backwards, Aric, I can see that what I've done all my life, my entire professional career is be an educator, a trainer, and again, that tracks back a hundred percent. 

I can tell you all the jobs I've had at IBM. I've had mentorships, I've been an advisor, I've been a trainer, all the things that I've done everywhere in my life, I've learned something. And then I've turned around and taught it to someone. And the reason I do that is because I'm passionate.

[00:17:00] It is absolutely what makes me feel that I'm being most successful in my life. So teaching someone, empowering someone, lifting someone up, getting them to that next level is what it's all about for me and  I'm learning. It's so funny when I first joined White Glove, I kind of thought like, who cares about financial stuff.

Like that's kind of dry and boring and it's so funny. As soon as I started learning and I started attending some of our workshops, I was like, huh, who knew? I'm really interested in financial stuff. Because it's a new topic for me. And I didn't know it before. And the stuff that I'm learning. Honest to God. It makes such a difference.

It changes. I am pretty well informed about financial stuff in general, but not as much as I am now that I've listened to all these advisors who are sharing this information. I have teenagers now, I have young adults and I'm teaching them. The stuff that they need to know that I've learned.

If you know this stuff when you're 20 years old, if you know, to max out your [00:18:00] 401k and get your employer match and just don't touch that, like just that is not even a question. That's just what you do. You start with that. You don't ever touch it. You just move forward. If you can give little nuggets like that to people that aren't having conversations about money with their families, with their partners, with their friends.

 I mean, it's still kind of a taboo topic for a lot of people. I am so passionate about making sure people get informed about the we best way to shape their financial future. What could be better like this is such a powerful education, bringing it even down into classrooms, bringing into the family dinner table is so important.

And I really feel like we get to contribute. 

Aric Johnson: Yeah, I don't want to put words in your mouth by any means, but I'm assuming that you started this podcast as a branch of just educating and reaching out and empowering people in all these different roles. So I just want to make sure that I'm accurate with that statement and then follow it up with who can benefit from [00:19:00] listening to this who should be listening to your podcast?

Lara Galloway: You know, a lot of people can benefit from listening to things, even in different industries, I guess, is what I'm thinking. But the people that work best with us that we're working best with today are financial advisors who are looking to grow their business. Now I've met a lot of financial advisors and know that not everybody is interested in growing their business and that's fine.

Some people are, you know, at different stages in their career. No problem. But the guys that are out there every day and they're trying to figure out how do I find my target audience? How do I find my people? How do I find my niche of people who are the people that I serve best? How do I get in front of them?

That's the first question? Where are they? We're really good at that. Number two. How do I connect with them? So it's not just finding them, but how do I connect with them? And I've talked with enough advisors over the years and all these coaching calls that I've been on with the peer round table and the White Glove University and the VIP coaching calls that I do with our clients.

And I've found that [00:20:00] people don't know the answer to that. They're trying everything they're spending hand over fist money, right. And they're just exhausted with trying every new thing out there. This is who it's for people who want to connect with their communities, who understand. That education is everything.

If you empower people to make good financial decisions, when it's time for them to start executing those decisions, when they realize they're over their head and they do need a professional to help them a financial expert, to help them. They'll call you because you were their educator. So anybody out there, we work with a lot of RIAs and independent broker dealers and some broker dealer firms.

Although it's always great to make sure that your compliance is going to support what we do. And we want to work. We do work through that. We work, we have a great compliance department to help with that, but this is the kind of group we want people that are growth minded. Who understand that educating people about financial education is absolutely critical and important.

And who understand that [00:21:00] from that, by that act of service, going out there and educating in your community, it comes back that karma comes back and people want to work with someone that they've already started liking, knowing and trusting from their work. 

Aric Johnson: Based on our conversation right now, based on our conversation off air I know that you are so excited to bring tips and tricks and strategies to the listening audience in the future podcast. But I don't want to wait. I want to start now. So based on your experience in the industry, what would you say is your number one personal tip for advisors and other industry professionals that are listening to this podcast?

Lara Galloway: It's all about again, education. Get out there the best way to teach people what they need to know. You, as an expert, you know, so much that we really need your help today. I mean, I think COVID helped really show people that finances are critical. We have to understand them. We have to make plans and decisions and thoughtful, you know, decisions for our future.[00:22:00] 

Educate people, get out there, serve your community, help people understand what they don't know. By doing that, you're going to sharpen your own sword. Okay. By being a presenter, by being a community educator, you're going to be known in your community, right. You're going to practice delivering some of the information that you need to deliver again and again, you're going to avoid wasting your time doing one-on-one appointments.

All the time, just one on one appointments. When you can gather a group of people together that have the same questions and answer their questions. One, you know, all at once in like a group setting. So just get out there and educate whether you do that through us, or however you do it. If you educate people in your community or in your church or your organization.

All of those really help you as an advisor. So practicing speaking, and explaining to people, some of these really complex terms in a way that they can understand is absolutely going to be beneficial to you, regardless of whether you do workshops.

Aric Johnson: [00:23:00] Absolutely. Great tip. All right. Let's get a little bit more personal now.

Let's put the work hat off for a little bit. What really brings you joy. So what do you enjoy doing in your free time?

Lara Galloway: I used to be a half marathon runner, and I would say that I really love to bake things that make you know, that have a lot of calories. I love being in my kitchen, cooking really good food, and I love running half marathons to counteract that.

Also I love really good craft beer. I'm a beer snob. But I don't run anymore. I have a, a little bit of an issue with running. So I'm a major walker now, and I love hiking and kayaking and being outdoors and basically just something in the outdoors that call that my church and being with my family and friends, some really good conversations and eating and drinking.

Good stuff.

Aric Johnson: I totally think we can hang out. I'm just going to tell you, but my soul is connected to water. So if we find ourselves at a lake with some craft beer one [00:24:00] time and just hanging out and oh yeah, that'd be fantastic.

Lara Galloway: Kayaking, canoeing. Absolutely. We're all into that. 

Yeah. Bring the families and just have a good time.

Aric Johnson: All right. Well, a couple more questions for you before we wrap this up. Lara, how would you define success at work? 

Lara Galloway: For me at work. It's all about that. Again, you're going to be surprised education and empowering. I am really being a coach, a life coach and a business coach. I have that bent to me where I like to lift other people up.

I like to study other people. I like to learn what makes them tick. I like to help them get where they want to go. That is so satisfying to me. 

Aric Johnson: That is fantastic. Love that. And know that answer doesn't surprise me at all. I knew right when I said it, I was like, I'm pretty sure I know where she's going with this.

Okay. This is the last question besides a little bit of contact info here in a little bit.  2020 was rough, right? 20, 21 was rough. You guys did an amazing job of pivoting, but at the same time, it looked pretty dark for [00:25:00] a little while and we're still not through the quote unquote pandemic or whatever we want to call it or, or label it at this point.

And it's not easy. To come into work every day and be positive or wake up with a positive attitude advisors, your general audience. They saw a lot of people panicking. A lot of people being very, very concerned. Do you have a mantra or a motto or something that helps keep you on track that lifts you out of maybe one of those funks all of us get into?

Lara Galloway: Probably you'll see this tattooed on my gravestone one day. It's very simple. Make it. and, you know, I'm a very positive person that comes naturally to me, but I'm also a pragmatist. And I really believe whenever we stop clinging to what we thought things were going to be misplaced me expectations.

You know, once we take a look at, I say the cards on the table, the hand that we've been dealt, [00:26:00] the next step is action. You have your feelings and all that's great. You're excited, you're disappointed. You're scared. You're whatever it is, but make it work. These are the cards on the table.

This is what we've got to deal with. How are you going to make it work? And that's a really pragmatic kind of like answer, but it also is very hopeful for me because I'm also really grateful with whatever I've got going on in my life and whatever's on my plate. And I say, okay, how can I make this. So that's my mantra.

Every day, my kids hear it all the time. I'm like, make it work, whatever it is. That's what you got. So make it work. 

Aric Johnson: All right. That's fantastic. Speaking of making it work, there's lots of listeners to this. Like we said, this is an international podcast. Folks are going to learn a ton of the podcast, but if they want to reach out to you have a conversation with you or your team, how do they get a hold of you guys?

Lara Galloway: Yeah, well, we are always, always online. You can reach us at info, White Glove dot. 

Aric Johnson: All right. Sounds good. Super [00:27:00] simple, Lara, thank you so much for your time today. This is fantastic. I had so much fun getting to know you and I hope the audience did. 

Lara Galloway: Thank you, Aric. I appreciate it. And can't wait to do some more.

Aric Johnson: You bet. And our last thank you is always going to go to you to listen audience. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the FAST Podcast with Lara Galloway. If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, which I know you haven't because this is the very first one. Please click the subscribe now button below this way.

When Lara comes out with a new podcast, it'll show up directly on your listening device. We humbly ask you to share this podcast, rate it and leave a review as this actually helps others. Find the show again. Thank you so much for listening today for everyone at White Glove. This is Aric Johnson reminding you to live your best day every day, and we'll see you next time.

VOICE OVER: Thank you for listening to the FAST Podcast, Financial Advisor Strategy Talks with Lara Galloway, your go-to source designed to help you grow your business. Have questions about topics covered during the show, visit our website at www.whiteglove.com or email us at info@whiteglove.com. Don't forget to click the follow button to be [00:28:00] notified when new episodes become available, the information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guests and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of White Glove.

The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investing advice always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service providers. With any questions you may have regarding your investment planning.

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