Regan Ervin

Snippet:

I started my business on an ethical premise. The problem was that I needed excellent, agency-caliber storytelling to develop the concept and make it viable, yet I’d left behind my job to do the right thing (a financially risky choice). My now-partner and I began an unconventional creative partnership to help me accomplish all this, and it worked out for us.

Detailed Story:

Three years ago I started Capital E Advisors, a wealth management firm in the Kansas City area. Leaving an established firm to start my own business was a Jerry-McGuire-kind-of-moment for me. I had quit my job because I believed a large swath of the financial services industry had gotten some fundamental things wrong, and I was embarking to get it right.

I had a big vision, and knew the unique advantages I planned to offer our potential clients were compelling ones. The challenge I faced was communicating my business’ messages in a simple, effective way—and doing so without hiring a big agency with an even bigger price tag.

The answer to my problem was simple, strategic storytelling. I formed a partnership with a local creative director, Stephanie Klein, who used a combination of her academic background in fiction-writing and the StoryBrand marketing method to tell my story. Eight months after launching the new brand, we’ve been able to gain 250+ followers on both LinkedIn and Facebook, 100+ on Instagram, and high-relevance engagement on our Twitter.

We’re also very pleased with our client acquisition rate since then. Attached to this email is a simple case study with audience data and financial results included.

We credit our success to four distinct solutions. The first solution was a brand messaging guide with story-driven messages. The second solution was implementing those meaningfully and strategically. We implemented these messages on a new website, social channels, and a short video series. Implementing our guide also included a visual rebrand to match the messages we’d written.

The third solution —which powered the first two—was an unconventional, small-business-to-small-business partnership. Solution four was simple, but can’t be overlooked. We had a business model that was worth taking a bet on.

Solution Number One: Our Brand Messaging Guide

The brand messaging document was intended to make sure our marketing copy was purposeful and succinct (and it’s done just that). Creating powerful messages required a deep dive into the brand’s history and motives. Stephanie was emphatic that we were thorough with this part, reminding us that the story has to be deeply true for story-centric marketing to work.

We spent several days in interviews, ending the research with beers at a local brewery. Stephanie recorded the conversations, journalist-style, just like she had been doing all week. During that conversation, the four of us who were involved in the interviews collectively hit the answer we’d been looking for. A couple weeks later, she called me, saying she’d finished the first draft. It needed more work, as she’d indicated it would, but the feeling I got even at that early stage was that we were
telling our client’s story. And, by extension, our own.

The above order of the characters in our story is particularly significant. We know now that the most captivating stories for customers place them in the main characters’ role and help them imagine a successful journey with a brand. We found it to be crucial that potential consumers see one of our messages and feel immediately seen. This messaging step set us up well because we had a central checkpoint for our marketing strategy, something to make sure whatever we were writing aligned in all the ways we decided were important at the onset.

Solution Number Two: Implementing the Messages

We took on a massive amount of work to implement our messages. Maybe even more than we needed to. But it ended up being more fun than tedious. We built a website with the help of a local developer, spent a couple of days shooting the videos (and many weeks editing them). Once the brand was ready, we established social media objectives and channels to meet those objectives. The process took months, with a launch date almost a year later.

Stephanie shares her perspective of this stage here:

One of the coolest moments we had was after the brand was launched and we started running a social paid campaign. We’d been pretty thorough in our audience research, and we noticed that there were some big gaps in the potential audience and the current audience being targeted by other firms.

• We identified that millennial men of all ethnic and racial backgrounds, and women 35 and up, would be interested in the transparent promises of our brand, and we believed that there was data out there that proved this interest would turn into leads.
• After we launched the first brand awareness campaign, our click spend was incredibly low—and we discovered that 60 percent of our audience was women in the targeted age bracket.
• Finally, we noticed that the men who engaged with us were from a far more diverse age and race demographic than other firms were experiencing.

Solution Number Three: Building a Partnership

Like most new business owners, I needed to find a way to market my business without adding more financial risk than was fiscally prudent. A partnership was the solution, and we both had to take risks
to form one.

As I mentioned earlier, my big vision was difficult to convey. I was inspired, but I needed help captivating and inspiring others. I’m merely an entrepreneur with an idea, and I needed a creative with vision of her own to take this idea and mold it into a tale that can have an impact.

Finding the partner I needed required me to take a risk. Agency costs for the kind of project we completed are intended for corporations, and even small-scale collaborations with creative consultants (like the one I opted for with Stephanie) can eat profits in those early days. In my case though, the story and the business were so dependent on each other that I couldn’t see myself waiting to work on the brand.

I haven’t heard of a financial firm with a creative partner before, but doing it this way meant both of us could experience exceptional results. We feel great about the success we’ve found in this joint venture.

Stephanie’s perspective:

When we started negotiating, we chose to be transparent about our mutual business goals. If we hadn’t started this way, I don’t know if it would have worked in the long run. We ended up reaching an agreement that included profit-based compensation for me, and ownership of certain business assets at a second growth stage. It was a risk for both of us. There was risk for me because there was a lot of commitment involved up front, and for Regan, he was giving up a significant share of future earnings if we were successful.

I think the reason why this arrangement worked is because we both really believed in this idea. Regan was willing to take me on based on my passion for his story. He chose to overlook the fact that my corporate acumen was different than partners he may have envisioned having when he made the leap—he was a former COO at a successful investment firm; I was a former English instructor finishing an MFA degree.

When we met, I was wearing a teacher’s blouse and cardigan, and probably came off as a little reserved. I was definitely the unconventional choice, and it would have been easy to dismiss me as “not a good fit”. But he prioritized risk differently, and we’ve both benefited from it.

Solution Number Four: A Business Idea Worth Betting On

When I launched Capital E, I had a big vision to genuinely help clients simplify their financial lives without sacrificing investment quality. I believed there was a better way to serve clients and I was eager to put this into practice. Under a standard fee structure, I aimed to deliver a robust, holistic client experience inclusive of estate planning, tax preparation, financial planning and unique investment management that prioritized value-added activities.

I knew how improved the results would be compared to traditional RIA outcomes, even from good firms. Stephanie had to have her own discovery of my idea. Her’s came from an outside perspective of what I was offering (one that was more similar to what my clients might have). But the important part was that, looking at it from either end of the idea, the business was a solid concept.

Stephanie’s take:

One of the things I like best about telling stories is this possibility on the horizon that I might discover someone with a really great story. I didn’t know when I met Regan that I’d get that feeling of epiphany. But during our early days of what we marketing professionals call “brand discovery”, I started to realize he had that indescribable thing I am always hoping to find when I met with a new client.

We connected over the logic (and yes, it was logic) of why he’d quit his incredible c-suite job at a respected firm to rally a small slew of clients under a different premise. As Regan described to me the systemic problem he noticed —across the investment industry—I realized he was pitching something brave. Smart. And in an industry nearly void of empathy—his whole idea was particularly empathetic.

In the investing industry, most clients hire their advisor to manage their money. Therefore, the advisor needs these clients to believe they are good investment managers. But studies repeatedly indicate the vast majority of investment managers underperform their benchmarks. Regan had data to show how he’d corrected this aspect, but the corrections he’d made for investment performance were only part of his overall plan.

He explained that the over-focus on investment decisions distracts from the aspects of wealth management in which advisors have a greater impact on their clients’ well-being. Regan reprioritizes the allocation of resources to those items he can control.

Truly knowing each client as a person allows him to identify the matters that are a source of financial anxiety and complication. Consulting with clients on financial matters that are important to them, keeping clients organized and on task, helping clients optimize their financial decision making, facilitating the completion of estate planning and tax preparation by professionals –these are the things an advisor can do to add value. After all, isn’t the experience of wealth the whole point?

This realization was my moment of epiphany. I thought of luxury brands I’d worked on and how honesty and adding holistic value was high on the “needs” list of Regan’s high-net-worth client demographic. I also thought of big brands who successfully told their disruptor stories and changed their industries.

For me as a storyteller, a disruptive brand with a big heart is one heck of an exciting find, especially since I could also see how the business could scale. The story and the scaleability combined gave me the courage to jump in with both feet.