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17th December, 2025 - Webinar replay

12 marketing mindset shifts that’ll help you overcome doubt, motivate you to keep going, and win in 2026

Phil Bray  

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our final webinar of 2025 got the naughty Elf on the Shelf. It’s Christmas. So thank you to everyone for giving up their time today to come to this. And the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed this was advertised as 10 marketing mindset shifts when I was sat writing it on Saturday morning, I couldn’t bring it in at 10, so we’ve gone for 12 marketing mindset shifts that’ll help you overcome doubt, motivate you to keep going and win in 2026 so you’re all very, very welcome. And I wanted to start today by saying thank you. Now the person I want to say thank you to isn’t actually here today. I did check whether they were coming, and they’re not. They are busy with a client, which is a bloody good excuse for not coming to a webinar. But I wanted to say thank you to them for two reasons, really. First, they were the inspiration behind this webinar, and that’s because they sent me this some time ago in an email, “any words of long term motivation would be much appreciated. I’m having a lead drought and a LinkedIn crisis of confidence”. So I replied, spoke to the planner last week as well. They seem to have gotten past that point, but I wanted to start today by saying thank you to them for two reasons. First, it gave me the inspiration for today’s webinar, and we are always looking for inspiration for new content, and then for also trusting me and Yardstick to come to us with their little crisis of confidence and the need for some motivation so they know who they are. I just wanted to start today by saying thank you. And also I want to today just show and recognise that marketing is actually really hard, and lead levels fluctuate over time. Some months are good, some months are poor, motivation comes and goes, they can cause wobbles in confidence. Self doubt is always there. I sometimes think that’s a good thing, that self doubt is there, providing it doesn’t overtake things. Imposter syndrome is never far away. So if you guys are feeling that way, A, you’re in the right place, but B, you’re not broken. This is normal. Everybody goes through it. Everybody goes through it, and today is talking about that. It’s not about hacks, it’s not about funnels, it’s not about shiny new tactics. We’ll do all that next year. Today, it’s about you, it’s about your mindset, and it’s trying to set you up for success next year. And I really enjoyed writing this. Hence me doing 12 rather than 10. I spent about six hours writing this on Saturday. It was really enjoyable. It’s the most enjoyable webinar I’ve written this year, I think, so hopefully everybody will get a lot from it. Dan, before we go into the meat of today, can you do your usual safe space how we do things conversation?

Dan Campbell  

Of course, yeah, let’s do some housekeeping. So, as Phil mentioned, it’s a slightly different format today. So rather than sharing actionable marketing tips, like we normally do, we’re coming at this from a motivational angle, so we’re going to be raising each other up to win in 2026 and that means that the safe space that we’ve all created together is more relevant than ever, really. So think of this as your judgment free zone, so we can discuss any fears, doubts or mental hurdles we have around marketing. So really, don’t hold back. Get stuck in. Take from the session what you want, and you can do that by using the Q&A box or the chat. So speaking of which, if anyone in the crowd can just give me a hello or a good morning in the chat to test if it’s working, that would be great. Hopefully Zoom has been messing with the settings lately, so it’s not clear if we click the right buttons, right? Thanks Emma, thanks Paul, thanks Amelia, and as the person that gave us the idea for this, who’s not here that leads us very well on to me saying we’re recording the webinar so that person can watch it back later, so you’ll receive a neatly packaged follow up email with all the video links, all the important notes, all the resources that we mentioned along the way. So do fall back on that if you need a mindset shift top up in the new year, mindset shift top up. Say that fast three times, but there we go. So Phil, you’re up. Motivate us, please.

Phil Bray 

I am no motivational speaker, mate. The other thing that we should just acknowledge is Abi. Abi’s poorly sick today, so you just got me and Dan. So go and say hello on LinkedIn to Abi and wish her well. So how are we going to do this? So for each of the 12, we’re going to look at the old mindset, the new mindset, and a quote from some of my favourite marketers, some of my favourite business people to keep us on track and also, in case you don’t believe us, not just us saying this. There are people that are far well known, far better marketers than us saying these sorts of things. So for each of the mindset shifts, old mindset, new mindset, and a quote to keep us on track. And as Dan said, do put your comments and questions in the chat. And if there’s a mindset shift that you want us to take on that we don’t cover, put that in there as well, if you would. So mindset shift number one, marketing takes longer than you think. Marketing takes longer than you think. The old mindset, “if this were working, I’d have seen results by now”. This were working, I’d have seen results by now. New mindset, marketing pays off later than you expect it to, but for longer than you realise. Marketing pays off later than you expect, but longer than you realise. And for me, there’s so many things in life that are an exercise in delayed gratification. Going to the gym is definitely an exercise in delayed gratification, potentially working with a financial planner, investing is an exercise in delayed gratification and marketing absolutely is as well. It takes time for you to start feeling the benefits. It also takes time for the benefits to hit the bottom line as well. I’m just off a call with an on-track Yardstick client, and we were working through their marketing KPI dashboard, and you can see the number of leads rising significantly. They’ve had more new inquiries in the past two months than they had in the first six months of the year. So if they’d given up during the first six months, they wouldn’t have gotten to that point where they started to get the gratification and the payoff. But even then, it takes time to get to the bottom line, because those clients have got to convert, or those leads have got to convert. So what we get into our heads is that this just takes time, and a lot of us, me included, are more impatient than perhaps we’d like to admit. But we’ve just got to get into our heads that this takes time, and it takes time partly because only around 3% to 5% of people are actively in-market, whether you’re in the B2C or B2B space, actively in market for what you do at any time. And of course, there’s no guarantee that they’re going to use you, so it’s going to remember. It takes time. And the most successful marketers, most successful marketers, are the ones who keep going even when they don’t want to and they feel like giving up. Take the gym, take eating healthily, take saving, there’s all sorts of things in life that just keeping going, get you to where you want to get to, but most people give up and don’t take my word for it. Take Mr. Hormozi’s word from it. Alex Hormozi may make a few appearances in today’s presentation, but he said “people who win are the ones who keep going without seeing the results of their work”. And there couldn’t be a truer word spoken, genuinely those people who win are those people who carry on in the absence of indicators of success. Keep plowing on. It will work in the end. So mindset shift number two, confidence follows action, not the other way around. So we often speak with advisers and marketers who say something along the lines of, “I’ll start when I’m ready. I’ll start when I feel more confident”. And there is a link here to seeking perfection, and we’ll deal with that later, but there is definitely that link here. But a lot of people just say, “I start when I feel more confident, I start when I feel ready”. So for me, the the mindset shift here is that it’s action that creates the confidence, if you do it and things don’t go wrong at a really low level of expectation, but actually you get a bit of feedback, or you, who knows get some positive result, a new inquiry, or something like that, it proves to you that actually the action had a positive result, and therefore you’re more likely to do it again. So for me, taking action reduces fear, proves that things don’t go wrong when you do it, but what you do get when you take action, is feedback. You get feedback as to what works and what doesn’t work, and that allows you to create better marketing. Take your newsletters, for example. Let’s say you put three articles in your newsletters. You look at that data over time, over the course of 6 to 12 months, you look at what people are engaging with, what they’re not engaging with, do more of what they’re engaging with, and do less of what they’re not engaging with. So you get that feedback loop. It improves your marketing. And guess what? When your marketing improves, you feel more confident. So all I would say here and I’m no psychologist, but from my perspective and the marketers that we work with, when they take action and they realise things don’t go wrong or they get a really positive result that improves their confidence, and what have we got here? Russell Brunson, “most people wait until they feel confident before they take action. Confidence doesn’t come first. It comes after”. And I would argue, if you wait till you feel confident, what’s going to change your state of mind? What’s going to take from A to B and suddenly feeling more confident if it’s not taking action. Mindset shift number three, consistency beats talent every time, consistency beats talent every time. So old mindset, “I’m not good enough and never will be”. Not good enough and never will be. New mindset, good habits, effective processes and a commitment to showing up matter more than talent, and this is absolutely core to your marketing. Marketing isn’t all about blue slides and ball pits and pool tables and blue sky thinking it’s kind of getting shit done and getting things done. And to get things done, you need good habits and good processes. And you need people around you who are good at habits and processes, and it’s why having ops people, operational people, is so important in the marketing mix, because they get things done. But what works for me here in terms of promoting consistency is not letting your audience down by not showing up. So there are people, let’s take LinkedIn, there will be people who read your LinkedIn posts on a regular basis. They might not engage with them. We’ll talk about the silent audience in a minute. But there’ll be people who read your LinkedIn posts on a regular basis. If you take two or three days off because you’re not feeling confident, or you’re not motivated to do it, or you’ve done something else instead, you’re letting them down by not showing up. So show up for your audience even when you don’t feel like it. I think we can all create good habits and effective processes. We’ve got to find what works for us now that might be somebody helping you, keeping you accountable, an accountability partner. It might be outsourcing it so that whoever’s doing it for you effectively creates those good habits and processes. It might be trying to change yourself, “Atomic Habits”, I’ve always found that to be an excellent book. I’ve actually never got to the end of it, because I’ve always found things that I want to implement, put the book down, try to implement them, and never made it to the end. Atomic Habits is a great book. And as I said earlier, the people who succeed aren’t always the most creative. They’re the ones consistent and show up on a regular basis. Say hello to Mr. Hormozi again, “a focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius”. I really like that, on the basis I’m no genius, I really quite like that. “A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius”. So that’s number three, consistency beats talent every time, and we can all be consistent with the right mindset. This is a big one for me. Silence is not a rejection. So the old mindset, “no likes, no comments, no replies, no leads. It’s not working”. And I know a lot of people that suffer from this, a lot of people that suffer from this. New mindset, it’s working, but the results take time. Gotta be patient. Do more, don’t give up and don’t get distracted. And we gotta remember our silent audience here. Yardstick this year, we took on a new client, lovely client, if anybody’s from that firm is here, lovely client. We’ve written a marketing strategy for them. We’re doing a website etc. And I said to one of the directors, “how did you find Yardstick? How do you find me? How do you find the answer?” And he said, “Followed your LinkedIn posts” and I looked back. Guess what? Never liked a post, never commented on a post, or never shared a post. He was in our silent audience, but he sat in front of me, taking our advice. Engaging with us. Now, if I’d have ignored that silent audience, or, even worse, given up because I thought the audience was silent and therefore not listening, I probably wouldn’t have sat in front of him. So just remember your silent audience, not everybody is in-market for your services at any one time, and not everybody actually wants to engage with replying to your newsletter, commenting on blogs, liking commenting and sharing your LinkedIn and social posts. Not everybody wants to do it. Not everybody thinks about doing it, but they’re there. They’re watching, they’re reading, they’re learning, and in their own way, they’re engaging. So you remember them and use that silence as a motivation to keep going and do more. So many people stop publishing content, promoting their business because they get silence, and they see that silence as negativity. Personally, I think we need to use that silence as motivation to keep going. Amy Porterfield, brilliant marketer, fantastic podcast. “Just because someone isn’t commenting or liking doesn’t mean they’re not listening”. Just because someone isn’t commenting or liking doesn’t mean they’re not listening. You will have people in your audience on LinkedIn, Facebook, your blog, whatever it is you don’t have them engage, but they’re reading it and it’s sinking in. And when they move into that 3% to 5%, guess what? It’s you that they’re going to be coming back to. Hopefully, that makes sense. So we’ve done four. Anybody’s got a marketing mindset shift they want us to tackle? Put it into the chat and let’s see what we can do. Anybody disagrees with any of this stuff, then pop something in the chat as well. Number five, imposter syndrome proves you care. Imposter Syndrome proves you care. Old mindset, “everyone else is better than I am. I’ll never be as good as them”, and we’re going to talk about comparison in a minute. But specifically on imposter syndrome for me, I think the reframe here is that it actually shows you care and you’re conscientious. I’m not sure that you can ever get over it. Other people on the call might tell me differently. I’m not entirely sure you can ever get over it, so I think you’ve got to learn to live with it. You’ve got to learn that it’s there and use it as motivation to get better. In the same way we talked about using your silent audience as motivation to do more, use imposter syndrome as motivation to get even better. And then just remember that those people who maybe don’t feel imposter syndrome, are those that are most confident, and they’re often the ones who are least qualified. Some of the people that I know, that I know, like and respect in this space, are full of self doubt, and that’s because they’re not sure they’re right, whereas people who are definitive and therefore more confident actually, are often not right. They’re often incorrect. And I think Carl Richards is really good. I think most people on this call will know who Carl Richards is. And if you just go to YouTube and look, go to Google and look up “Carl Richards imposter syndrome”, there’s a couple of videos that he’s done that are really good. He talks about a character from The Simpsons, and his videos are really, really good on imposter syndrome. They’re only about five minutes long. He did one with Michael Kitces, really good stuff. And one of the quotes he’s got from one of those videos, “I’ve learned to think of it as a friend. Welcome back, my old friend. I’m glad you’re here now. Let’s get to work”. Carl explains it better on those videos than I can do here, but he’s very good on it. And me, it strikes everybody. “The most effective marketers repeat messages”. You can make the same case about politicians as well, couldn’t you? We can all think of politicians that repeat messages, whether it’s Tony Blair, “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. We can remember that. Mr. Johnson “get Brexit done”. We can all remember politicians of every colour that has repeated messages to get that point across. Unfortunately, the old mindset here that we often come across with firms is “I’ve already written or posted about that, I can’t do it again”. So despite the fact that the post was only read by a small proportion of people, or it was eight months ago, they feel that if they’ve done it once, they can’t do it again, and that causes some quite significant issues. So new mindset, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, saying the same things in different ways. Yardstick, I remember being told about six years ago, “you are always banging on about social proof”, you’re always banging on about social proof. And it was actually meant as a compliment, and I took it that way, as a compliment, because we are, and we still are six years later, but it meant the message was getting through. So it’s so important to repeat your messages on a regular basis. Yeah, do it in different ways. We’re not talking about copy and paste. Why is it important? Well, some people will have missed the original message. There’s research that shows only a relatively small proportion of your connections on LinkedIn, your followers on LinkedIn, will have seen each post somewhere between 10 and 20%. If you look at your newsletter stats, you certainly don’t get 100% of people opening it. You certainly don’t get 100% of people clicking every article. So some people in your audience might have missed the original message. Others might have seen it and forgotten about it, or it wasn’t the right time for it to land and resonate. And then new people in your audience, new followers on LinkedIn, new connections on Facebook, new people in your newsletter database are seeing it for the first time. So, it is so important to repeat messages for your audience’s benefit, but also for your own benefit. So one of the challenges that we see firms come up with when it comes to content production is understanding what to post, what to write about. So having this conversation. Ben, I think you’re here today. We’re having this conversation yesterday about how to come up with ideas. And if you are repeating messages, guess what? That’s fewer ideas that you got to come up with. So you’re being kind to your audience, and you are being kind to yourself as well. So repeat, repeat, repeat, have the confidence to say the same thing in different ways, and a friend of Yardstick, Marcus Sheridan, “the companies that win are the ones that are willing to say the same things over and over again”, and he’s absolutely true. So if you don’t take my word for it, take Marcus’s word for it. Dan, think something might come in on that point.

Dan Campbell  

Yeah we can take Marcus’s word for it, or we can take Catherine’s word for it, who says “this is the best mindset shift from your advice. There’s only so many topics we can come up with so it’s great to reuse topics now in different ways”.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, I completely agree. Thank you, Catherine. If you think we beat this number six in the next six, tell us, Catherine. I think you’ll find a better one in the next six. But you guys are great at producing content, but coming up with ideas is never easy, and this one is being kind to your audience and kind to yourself. Okay, halfway through. Number seven, comparison is a thief. Don’t let it steal from you. Comparison is a thief, don’t let it steal from you. Old mindset “everyone else is better than I am at this”, everyone else is better than I am at this. New mindset, there’s always somebody doing it better than you. Just get over it. Dan, you’ve got a gym at home, I go to a gym, so you’ve got nobody to compare yourself to apart from yourself. I’ve got a load of people in the gym that you’re looking at that are lifting heavier, running faster and cycling longer. And you know what? That comparison is pointless. I’m happy with myself, most of the time. So for me, there’s always somebody doing it better than you, or there’s always somebody that you perceive might be doing it better than you. The two things are different. So I would reverse this and reframe it, learn from them and steal from them. I’m not talking about copy and pasting and plagiarising their posts, but you can steal ideas. You absolutely can steal ideas. So for example, sign up to a few webinars from people outside our sector. Learn from what they do in their sequence, their cadence and the good bits steal it, put them into your webinar sign up process. The bits you don’t like, just make sure you’re not making the same mistakes. Go and have a look at the content, the LinkedIn post that people put out and steal some ideas. I was on a webinar a couple of weeks ago with a guy called Colby. Can’t remember his second name. He produces the 1% newsletter. It’s out every Monday. It’s bloody good. Go and sign up for it. And one of the things he talked about was putting a little note in your LinkedIn post and asking people if they found it helpful, share it. So I’ve started doing that. I’ve learned from him. I’ve stolen that idea. Phil Calvert came up with something on LinkedIn where he talked about using the line, “thank you in advance”, and then an ellipsis. Ellipsis is really important, and I’ve used that as well. So go and have a look at these people. Try to avoid the comparison, but learn from them, steal from them. The other thing I’d say here is say no if you can to doom scrolling and comparing. I very rarely scroll down my LinkedIn feed. I don’t scroll down my Twitter feed now at all, I got rid of Twitter, but very rarely scroll down my LinkedIn feed because I found I was looking at people’s posts, looking at the engagement they were getting and thinking, “Jesus, that’s got 300 likes. Why is that doing so well?” Yeah, it’s normally slagging off the government. That’s probably why it is doing so well. But I was becoming obsessed with how other people were doing, so just cut it out. Don’t doom scroll. Find a few people you like, click the notification button or sign up for their newsletters, sign up for their webinars, and learn from them that way. But I just think doom scrolling down is just a road to ruin.

Dan Campbell  

Yeah, I’ve just put the copy newsletter link in the chat for anybody that wants to subscribe. It is fantastic, and something I heard really useful about taking from people in the most positive way was the phrase “adapt, adopt, improve”, because some people get a bit weird about copying and this idea of plagiarism, and it’s not about that, as Phil alludes to. It’s about taking the essence of something and just bringing it into a format that feels right for you, and then doing something with it. So yeah, if you feel weird about copying, adapt, adopt and improve.

Phil Bray 

Yeah, it’s nice like that. Really like that. And then that leads on to the only meaningful comparison is you versus last year. So we’ll often get clients at Yardstick saying, “how does my website traffic compare to other advisers? How does my open rate on my newsletter compare? How do my lead levels compare?” You know what? Doesn’t really matter. It’s a bit like one of your clients sat in the pub comparing the size of their pension or the investment returns they have had this year. It’s pointless. Is what you’re doing and what you’re getting, enough for you to achieve your objectives? Yes or no. That’s important, but also important, are you improving? So the only meaningful comparison is, how are you doing month on month, perhaps more importantly, year on year? And Mel Robbins talked about this. Love Mel Robbins, “comparison is another game. Focus on your own progress and purpose”. There’s always somebody that’s fitting you in the gym, there’s always somebody who’s got more money, there’s always somebody who’s better at golf or whatever it is. Let’s move away from those comparisons and just remember that the only meaningful comparison when it comes to marketing and a lot of other stuff is with yourself. So hopefully that helps. Marketing mindset shift number eight, focusing on a niche feels risky, but it’s often the right move. We’ve been talking a lot this year about target audiences and niches. A niche, for me, is a deep dive into a group. So Yardstick, we can argue that we work in a niche. We work in the financial services niche. You have other advice and planners who might work in a niche. You’re working with dentists or vets or doctors, SIPP property purchase, whatever it might be. That’s a real niche. You can make an argument that the local area is a niche as well. We work within a five mile range of our office. We have other advisers who don’t work in a niche, but service a target audience, a broader range of people, people thinking about retirement, at retirement, in retirement, so that’s excluding younger accumulators. You can argue that you overlay a niche on top of that with a local area, but often, when we’re talking about target audience and niche, we get pushback. That pushback is summarised by what’s on screen. Essentially, “I’m limiting my opportunities by focusing on a niche”. And you know what? You’re not. You’re genuinely not, because fishing in a barrel is easier than fishing in the ocean. Yeah. And to prove the point, generalists blend in. It’s hard to stand out as a generalist. Specialists stand out, and that means choosing a niche or a target audience is actually a strategic advantage with your marketing. It makes marketing so much easier when you’re focusing on a niche or a target audience, because you can find the niche, you can find the target audience, and you can communicate with them. Once you understand who you’re communicating to, life becomes so much, so much easier. And this is a new guy that I’ve started following James Brindle. I would love to get him on our webinar next year. We’ve got some cracking guests lined up. Heather Elkington in January is going to be great. Show everyone about that later. And I’d love to get James Brindle on. He does a lot of Facebook wheels. Really highly recommend going to look at James. And one of the things James has said, “your niche isn’t a fence, it’s a spear”, your niche isn’t your fence, it’s your spear. And I absolutely love that. A niche is not constraining you. It’s making it much, much more targeted. Dan, I see something from David.

Dan Campbell  

David doubles down on the idea of the niche saying. “I’ve done niche marketing for the last 15 years, and it really does work. However…” The ellipsis at the end of the “however” means you might have something else to say David, so don’t leave us hanging if there’s something that we ought to know. 

Phil Bray 

David, something else he’s added in there.

Dan Campbell 

“However, what about people like me? And I can think of a few others like me at the career stage where we’re doing a couple of different things because we’re interested in and believe in them, and how do we pitch that on our LinkedIn pages?”

Phil Bray  

That’s a really good point. And I’ve seen that you’re doing some other stuff in the M&A and exit space. David, I think it might be what you are alluding to there. So you know what? I think there’s three places on LinkedIn we said we weren’t going to get practical and tactical today. But as you’ve asked the question, let’s deal with it. So where you have a couple of interests, main interest in a side hustle, or whatever it is. And let’s assume that you want to promote both on LinkedIn. And I think you possibly should, or at least be mentioning both. It’s three areas on LinkedIn where you would do that. One is on your banner, and we talk a lot about having a banner image that includes some social proof, contact details, logo of your business and a statement about what you do, who you do it for, and why people use you. So if you have LinkedIn Premium, you can have up to three banners. They scroll through, have one banner for one position, and a second banner for another position and that solves that problem. Your headline, you’ve got four lines, I forget the character count. You got four lines. Use two lines for one position, two lines for another position, and then in the “About Us” section, introduce yourself, and then break the “about us” section, David, down in two parts, explaining one role and the other role. Hopefully that, hopefully that helped David. So that was James Brindle on mindset shift number eight. Let’s go to number nine. Marketing doesn’t need motivation. It needs systems, processes and hard work. Old mindset, “I’ll do it when I feel motivated”. I’ll do it when I feel motivated, new mindset. And this goes back to something we were talking about before, good habits beat good intentions, and motivation is unreliable. It’s cold, wet, it’s half five in the morning. I don’t want to go to the gym. I want to hit snooze and carry on sleeping. Motivation is unreliable. Comes and goes, whereas, if you have systems that reduce risk and remove that friction and you have systems for doing what you need to do, those systems promote consistency, and then you’re relying on consistency, not willpower to do something. Good example, collecting Google and VouchedFor reviews. I can think of firms that we work with that say, “we’ll get around to it every three or four months”. Guess what? They don’t. They’re either not motivated to do it, or life gets in the way and they don’t do it. We have other firms that follow a system. They send one email out with two links to Google and VouchedFor, and that email is wholly exclusively and only about the Google or VouchedFor review. They send it after onboarding a new client, and after every annual review meeting, guess what? They’re killing it when it comes to Google and VouchedFor reviews. That’s because they’ve got a system for doing it. Other firms, adding prospects to their newsletter database. As soon as a prospect comes in, they’ve got a system. They do these three things. They record the inquiry, they have them on the newsletter database, and they ring the inquiry to try and book them in for a meeting, but they have a system for doing it. Others, they ring the inquiry, then forget to put it on their inquiry recording spreadsheet and never get around to putting it onto the newsletter. So the system beats motivation. It’s really, really important that we do that. And this is why habits, processes, systems are so important when it comes to marketing, and it’s why having somebody on your team who is good at operations is really important when it comes to marketing, people who can get stuff done. Mr. Hormozi puts it slightly more punchy than I have done. “Motivation is garbage. You need discipline”, whether you believe that or not, I do think you need discipline. I do think you need assistance. Mindset number 10, good and published, beats perfect in private. Old mindset, “I’ll just tweak it a bit more”. New mindset, published 8 out of 10 beats an unfinished 10 out of 10. Give you a really good example of this. We know how long it takes to produce websites here at Yardstick. We know how long the design takes, how long the copy takes, how long the development takes.You add it all up, comes to about 170 hours for each website. We break that down as well to websites for sole practitioner firms, and compare it with websites for much larger firms. And we’ve built websites for firms with 100-150 advisers. Guess which, on average, takes longer? It ain’t the firm with the 100 or 150. Genuinely, websites that we build, the sole practitioner firms often take much, much longer than that they build for their larger counterparts, and that’s a result of a lot of things we’ve talked about today, not feeling confident about it, trying to get it to a 10 out of 10 before it’s published, etc. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive to be the best, but there comes a point where actually publishing and getting something out, whether it’s a LinkedIn post, a Facebook post, a video on Tiktok, a blog, a newsletter, a website, there comes a point where getting it out into the wild beats the marginal gains of waiting for months and trying to get that. Dan, you’ll have seen that in the branding process.

Dan Campbell 

Yeah, there’s always a point where, if I mean, I take the Alex Hormozi approach, where I put it a bit bluntly, where if you’re amending your own amends, it’s probably time to put down the pen. You know, because you can go in circles forever. There’s always ways that you can change “who” to “whom”, and then “whom” back to “who”. Get it out there. And if it’s broadly brilliant, it doesn’t matter if it’s going to be perfect in your eyes, because it might be perfect in someone else’s eyes.

Phil Bray

Yeah, I completely agree. And there’s times I do it. There’s times when we’ve written stuff at Yardstick this year, it’s a really important piece of communication, and you’re constantly tinkering, you’re constantly tinkering. So perfectionism, it’s often fear in disguise. “What happens if I push this and someone spots something that’s not perfect?”. Great feedback. We talked about feedback. We can change it. Ross Simmons talks a lot about this. He talked about this on a Yardstick webinar a while ago. People care much less than we think. So publish. Prospects don’t see what you nearly publish. Prospects don’t see what you nearly publish. Write it. Get it out. Write it. Get it out. Don’t hold it back. Yeah, don’t hold it back. Get it written. Get it published. And see it doing its work. And back to that feedback point. Progress comes from posting, publishing and learning. Push something out, it bombs. Or you push something out, it doesn’t get the reaction you want, right? Let’s tweak it. Let’s do it again. Publish it at a different time. Try something different.

Dan Campbell 

And Paul raises a good point in the comments where you can use things like Grammarly to get to that point where perfection may be subjective, but objectively it’s good to go out, no typos, no grammar issues, things like that. So use the tools available to you in that sense too.

Phil Bray 

100%. Chatting with Ben, who’s on the call, yesterday we’re talking about newsletters, and we went down a list of tools. Yes, you might write the article and write the headlines yourself, but give it to a well trained piece of AI to knock the edges off it. Use Grammarly to improve punctuation. Use a native spell check for anything really obvious, use the “read aloud” function in Word. The Read Aloud function is free, and it is the thing that elevates content more than anything else. Don’t know if anybody on the call uses it, Catherine, you said you use it. If anybody else uses the read aloud function in Word, just put a note in the chat and just explain the benefit you get from it. But it will elevate your confidence, content and your confidence massively. And use something like Headline Studio from CoSchedule to improve your headlines. That really, really helps. And then play around with things like the Hemingway Editor, which will show you where you’ve got complex sentences. So there are so many tools that you can use that are at your disposal to get more confidence, to an 8 out of 10. And then click publish. Our friendly expert here who will help, Seth Godin. I love his glasses. “Shipping beats perfection”. Shipping beats perfection. And you know what? He’s absolutely right. There comes a point where you’ve just got to publish whatever it is, Facebook reel, video on YouTube, blog, website, just click publish. We can knock the edges off later. Number 11, you don’t need different, but you do need more. Don’t need different, but you do need more. “These tactics aren’t working. I need new tactics”. That’s the old mindset, and we call it magpie marketing. Don’t be a magpie marketer, somebody that is distracted by shiny new things all over the place. It goes back to the first thing that I said. Marketing takes time, delayed gratification. Be patient. Be really patient. Don’t get distracted by shiny new things. And we see people getting distracted by shiny new things because some people are just easy to sell to. We see people getting distracted by trying new things because they don’t understand the length of time it takes to make marketing work. They’re impatient. And then there’s that fear of missing out, isn’t there? Fear of missing out on something new, something fancy, me? Double down and do more, not different. If something’s working, even if it’s only in the early stages, do more of it. Don’t look and go and do something different. Do more of it. So let’s say, for example, a firm in 2024 had a recommendation rate of 5%, 2025 they have a recommendation attempt rate of 10%. Still not enough to achieve their objectives, but has improved. So what do they do? Go and add another tactic in buying leads from somewhere. Or do they double down on referrals? The answer is obvious, double down on referrals. Don’t do different. Do more. And we have Gary Vee. If anybody follows Gary Vee, “most people quit because they’re bored, not because it doesn’t work”. So if you’re doing something and it’s working, do more of it to make sure you get the benefit of it, don’t stop doing something that’s working and go and do something else. Dan, something from Phil. 

Dan Campbell  

Great comment from Phil that says, “I totally agree that persistence and just getting stuff out there is the key. Get on and write something. Editing is much easier than writing and do a little every day. Again, much easier than that big creative day, which might never happen. Also develop your own voice. So don’t “over AI it” as I’d say”. 

Phil Bray 

Yeah I completely agree. A couple of things I’d just say on that, you’ve got to find what works for you. And Philip, you are a model of consistency. I think every Sunday night I get your newsletter, without fail, you’re an absolute model of consistency and a shining light that people should look to, and you’ve clearly found what works for you. So everybody should find what works for them, and then I completely agree with the AI. For me, I use AI in the writing process just to knock the edges off things, and to look for examples where I’ve written something where actually it’s not my tone of voice. So I’m using it as a partner, an editing partner, rather than somebody that’s writing stuff for me, but it’s still edited by humans so my blog every week gets edited by Abi after AI’s had a quick look at it to knock the edges off as well. So yeah, Philip, thank you for that comment, really appreciate that. Right mindset shift number 12, the last one, stop asking what this will cost and start asking what this will deliver. Stop asking what it will cost and ask what it will deliver. So old mindset, and we get this a lot. People say to us, “how much is it going to cost now?” And I get it, you’ve got to be able to afford the thing in the first place. Yeah, you’ve got to be able to have the money in the bank account, or means to pay for something, I completely get that. But marketing’s an investment, not an expense. If you spend a pound and get five back, you should be looking for how to spend more pounds because you’re going to get more back, not reduce the number of pounds that you spend. So marketing is an investment. It isn’t always attributable, we’ve got to get that into our minds as well. And I posted a little video from Rory Sutherland, and we’ve got a Rory Sutherland quote coming up in a minute around this, but we need to think of it as, I say, as something that produces return on investment, rather than an expense. And in the financial services space, financial planning, wealth management, whatever we want to call it, actually, the return on investment is massive on marketing. Because it’s initial fees, it’s ongoing fees for the length of the relationship you have with that client. And then you add in a multiple of three, three and a half times. David, you might be able to tell me differently, given what you’re doing right now, but you’re adding a multiple of three to three and a half times to the value of your business. And compare that to a mortgage broker who might only redo business every two, three, four or five years. Compare it to somebody selling, I don’t know, a conservatory. Your return on investment is much, much, much lower. So what we’ve got to remember here is the ROI, we should absolutely be tracking it, is the ROI we need to remember that focusing on cost, ignores the return. And then lastly, what other options do you have? Yeah, you could go and buy a business. You could go and buy a book. And there’s definitely merits for doing that. But aside from buying a book and marketing, what’re the options you have for growing a business? Yeah, someone’s got some. Please hit me with them. So we need to see that new mindset, marketing is an investment, not an expense. “The biggest marketing lie is that marketing is a cost”. Thank you. Roy Sutherland, I might get a tattoo with that tattoo of Rory’s face and that. The biggest marketing lie is that marketing is a cost. So to wrap up, and before we tell you what we got coming up in January, you don’t need perfect timing, shiny new tactics and endless motivation. You do need patience, an open mind, and as I’ve said a few times today, remember that message, repeat, repeat, repeat, good habits, good process and good systems to create that consistency. And you don’t win the marketing race by being the cleverest. You win by not stopping. So keep showing up, keep doing your work. People who don’t know you yet, strangers, people who don’t know you yet, will be grateful you carried on, because some of those will get in touch with you. Some of those will work with you. And guess what? When people work with you, they get better financial outcomes. They feel more confident, they feel more assured. They get more peace of mind when they’re working with a financial adviser or planner. So if you keep going, if you keep showing up, those people you don’t know yet will be grateful you carried on. So I really hope anybody that was struggling with a bit of marketing mindset towards the end of the year, was a little bit fatigued at the end of this year. That this gives you some help as we move into 2026. As we move into 2026, we have this fabulous webinar lineup, Heather Elkington. Heather is a management expert. What does management have to do with marketing? I hear you ask. Well, everybody on this call is managing somebody when it comes to your marketing, you might be managing yourself, possibly the hardest people to manage. You might be managing freelancers or agencies. You might be a marketing manager, managing people within your organisation. You might be marketing advisers, trying to get them to do the right things. You might be managing advisers trying to get them to the right things. And you might be a marketing manager or exec who needs to manage upwards and manage their boss, not always easy to do. So there is so much that is linked between marketing, success and management. I’m delighted that we got Heather. Heather publishes her newsletter I think every Tuesday. It’s bloody fantastic. And I’m really looking forward to this. I was writing the invite at the weekend and really enjoy writing the invite, and Heather’s going to be fantastic. Lastly, before we do a few questions and comments, I really want to get your feedback on the webinars that we’ve done this year. It helps us make them better next year, and we have got some cracking guests lined up next year, really good guests, all down to Abi’s hard work, nowt to do with me but we want to make the webinars even better, so please just scan that or click the link that Dan’s putting in the chat. Now give us two minutes of your time to fill the survey in. We’ll love you forever, and it’ll help us improve next year. Dan questions, what we got?

Dan Campbell  

So first of all, let me pop the registration link in the chat for next time. And I would absolutely second that. I mean, the fact that Heather’s come in to chat with us is absolutely a treat for everybody, ourselves included, because we’re big fans of Heather here at Yardstick. In fact, it was one of the first books I pre-ordered in recent times because I was that eager to read it, and it’s brilliant. So a couple of questions. Let’s start with Matt, because Matt asks a fantastic question. “We are a young company who have just started to really focus on marketing and pushing client acquisition. So there isn’t so much a mindset shift as there is a need for mindset creation. What would you say are the most important things to get right from the off, instead of trying training it and having to undo anything that you do incorrectly?”

Phil Bray

So I think the first thing, it’s a great question, first thing is to understand who you’re marketing to. Don’t do anything. Don’t pass go, don’t collect £200. Don’t do anything until you’ve understood who you’re marketing to, and that is things such as, what gets them out of bed in the morning, what aspirations keep them awake at night, what are their problems and challenges? What occasions do they seek the services that you offer, whether it’s financial advice, planning mortgages? How do they seek it? Where do they hang out online? When they hang out socially, what’s the shortest distance from you to get your message across to them? So really start to understand who your audience is, and don’t start doing anything until you understand the audience. The second thing, define what success looks like. Sit down, work backwards. What do we need to achieve? How many new clients do we want? How many leads do we think we need to do that? Probably one in four. And then that sets the target. Then fix your marketing foundations. Written a load about that in the past, and then look to drive growth. But it all starts with understanding who you want to target. Otherwise you’re just trying to boil the ocean or fish in the ocean. You want to fish in a barrel. So I hope that helps.

Dan Campbell  

Brilliant. Thanks for Phil. I’ve also put the survey link in the chat as well, so people can click that and fill that out. And then finally, the last link from me, I’ll also put a link to Heather Elkington’s newsletter. So if anybody wants anything motivational on a Tuesday morning, I know I certainly do, you can click that, pop your email in and become part of the 19,000 people that do it. So we do have a few more questions and comments. So David, a little earlier, said, “absolutely true. And not only does higher recurving revenue drive increased enterprise value, so does good systems and processes that drive said, higher recurving revenue a systemised business is more a valuable business than one where the principal is doing everything”. So absolutely you either have to outsource time or money, don’t you? Because it’s one of the two. Question from Harpreet, who says, “what about an understanding of algorithms? I get put off with the belief that the work we do will be undermined by a changing environment”.

Phil Bray 

That’s a really good point, and those algorithms will apply to Google search, AI search, social media, spend any time at the moment on LinkedIn, and it feels like, I don’t think it is the case, but it feels like every third post is talking about the new LinkedIn algorithm and how it works. I think my view is to not spend too much time worrying about algorithms. There are certain things that I would do to please algorithms. So on ChatGPT, for example, in AI, that’s about putting out expertise indicators and source information, things like Google reviews, VouchedFor reviews, all that sort of stuff. So I’ll be doing that good stuff. LinkedIn, really little example, the more you can get someone to share a post or save a post, that helps as well. But after that, kind of stop worrying about it and work on the basis that if I’m pushing out enough content to the right people that is helpful, it kind of takes care of itself. Because I think you can get fixated on the algorithm, and that can create two issues. It means you end up writing or publishing or creating for the algorithm for a bot, rather than a human. And then the second thing, when it all changes, you’ve got to change. So whilst I would give a nod to the algorithm, and there’s some basic stuff you can do for me after that, it’s about being helpful, consistently being in helpful mode and it will get picked up. Hope that helps.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. Question from Howard, who missed the first 40 minutes due to an unfortunate incident returning a leased car, asking if they can watch the video again. You certainly can, Howard. We record it, so you’ll get a link to that recording sent out later today. And then, I love these. An anonymous attendee asks a question, I promise you it’s not me writing it. Always quite mysterious, isn’t it? They say, “do you have any tips to motivate the directors who are advisers to buy into the long term results?” Good question. 

Phil Bray 

Well, turn up for Heather’s webinar next month, where we’ll talk about managing upwards. There’s one. I think this is about educating people who have previously built their client bank through business development. Actually, the world is different. So I started back in 1995 in financial services. I know, you wouldn’t believe it. And there was 30 of us in a room. We had three computers between us, and somehow you needed to find clients. Now, Google wasn’t a thing. AI wasn’t a thing, social media wasn’t a thing. So the tactics we use then to generate new inquiries, some of them might work now, but actually it’s a different world right now. So I think part of it is to help directors of business’, and I rather make an assumption about the age of the directors of businesses there, but it’s about making sure that they understand we’re in a different age and trying to educate them on some marketing fundamentals, about return on investment, about not everything’s attributable, about the need to do marketing, about the interaction between the offline world and the online world. About AI, about social proof. I think it’s about education and where directors of companies want to be educated and are open minded enough, I’ve seen it work really really well.

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. We do have one or two more. So Andrew asks, “how do you balance consistency and clear messaging with allowing team members the freedom to stay creative and motivated?”

Phil Bray 

Andy, hope you’re well. How do we balance consistency and clear messaging with allowing team members. Okay, so there’s a few things there. I think that’s the difference between whether they’re publishing on personal accounts or company accounts. You can be more creative with personal accounts than you can be company accounts. They can go in different directions. I think Robin is a great example of that, who can’t make it today. And I think you can give people guidelines and guardrails to work within. “So we do this, we do talk about these things, we don’t talk about these things” I think things like that can help as well. And I think showcasing and sharing results. So if you’ve got a couple of team members in your business who are doing really well at something, share and showcase those results with other advisers in the team explaining the benefits. I remember a client we work with, where we were trying to do some client video, testimonial videos. There’s maybe five advisers, and only one adviser came forward with any names. So we’re doing a package of three. All those three videos were for her clients. We showed the advisers, the five advisers those three videos, guess what? They soon came to us with names when they saw them. So I think showcasing the results, I think helps as well.

Dan Campbell  

Brilliant. Do we have time for one more? We’ve got one final question. So this is Catherine again, who says, “we like to be consistent with blogs, newsletters, socials, etc. It’s hard to quantify different marketing avenues such as podcast sponsorship or event sponsorship. I’m now questioning whether that’s something like that is magpie marketing, and should we just keep to what we currently do?”

Phil Bray  

Okay, so let’s take something like podcast sponsorship. That’s something like that. I think you can quantify because let’s say you sponsored a podcast and that involved the podcast host reading out an advert, some links being sent out in the show notes however, it’s done. You can track a lot of that, through trackers, tracking links, UTMs, etc, there’s a bunch of stuff you could do to track that. So therefore, you could compare what you’ve spent with the traffic that comes to the website for that, leads that come directly through that. So that thing that is a good example of where you can see attribution, and you can do that with things like Unbiased with Google ads etc, and you could probably do the same with event sponsorship might be slightly less attributable there. So I think if you can find ways of making it attributable, Catherine, and tracking then absolutely you should, and then you can look at the results. So I’m not saying we shouldn’t be trying different things. What I’m saying is we need to double down on what’s working first. 

Dan Campbell 

Brilliant. Thanks, Phil. I lied. That wasn’t the last one. I do have one, very quick one, but it’s not a question. You’ll be relieved to know, Phil. It’s just a comment. So a very generous Howard has said, “to anonymous, I am the old guy”, Howard’s words, not mine. Sorry, Howard, “who is responsive to youngsters. It makes a huge difference when each sees the other’s view. To your directors, I would tell them that my youngsters are doing really well with me as part of the new business. The difference was when we each saw how the other had a valuable part to input”.

Phil Bray 

Thank you. That’s a lovely place to finish. Right guys. Thank you very much for your support with these webinars over the past 12 months. I hope today was useful. I really enjoyed putting it together selfishly. Hope you enjoyed the session and you again found it useful. Do complete that webinar survey please for us. Thank you very much. Do sign up for Heather’s webinar with us in January, and have a great Christmas, everybody. We’ll see you on the other side.

Dan Campbell  

Take care guys. See you next year.