Josh Crawford is Vice President of Coaching at Matson Money, a $9.2 billion (as of 6/10/22) wealth management and advisor coaching firm that provides outsourced investment management, education, coaching, brand-building, and prospecting opportunities to over 500 advisory practices in the US and Canada. Josh leads a team of business coaches that work closely with advisors to better serve their clients and grow their businesses.
Russ Alan Prince: Can you share some background on Matson Money and your role at the company as a next-gen leader and coach?
Josh Crawford: Matson Money was founded on the principle that much of what Wall Street sells, for instance, mutual funds that may rely on stock picking, market timing, and track-record investing have the potential to benefit financial institutions and could disadvantage individual investors. The Matson Method, the investment methodology created by our founder and CEO Mark Matson, was developed to help investors meet their long-term objectives. It takes a very different approach, providing investors with a structured, globally diversified, and broadly invested portfolio that is grounded in Nobel Prize-winning economic principles as well as advanced thinking on human behavior.
To help empower investors to maintain investment discipline over a lifetime, we provide educational coaching programs for advisors and clients to gain insight into how their own biases can impact a portfolio. Our flagship two-day event is the American Dream Experience. We teach participants about free-market principles and the potentially damaging consequences of stock picking, market timing, and track-record investing. Participants have the opportunity to gain not only insight into empirically tested academic investing science but also can learn how to discover and pursue their true purpose for their wealth.
As the VP of coaching for Matson Money, I’m also focused on helping advisors grow their businesses. Investor events can be a valuable prospecting tool to attract new clients and acquire more assets from existing clients. As part of this, I oversee our Brand Ambassador Program, which trains independent advisors to lead events in their own cities, build their leadership skills, attract new clients in new markets, grow assets, and improve operational efficiencies. As part of our Brand Ambassador program, advisors can also learn the value of co-branding with a like-minded firm to amplify and raise awareness of their services.
Prince: What are the biggest challenges financial advisors are facing these days?
Crawford: The industry’s push toward zero fees highlights the need for advisors to ensure they are offering real value, not just acting as facilitators who invest client money into funds and move it around when asked. For advisors to differentiate themselves, they need to counsel clients on the skills required to follow a long-term plan.
We train advisors to be more than asset allocators and partner with their clients to be coaches, helping them discover their true purpose for their wealth by transforming their relationships with money. With this mindset, advisors can be better equipped to leverage new interpersonal techniques such as behavior coaching to help clients overcome obstacles that could be sabotaging their futures, such as emotional pain, fear or frustration tied to money, and impulsive behavior. The advisor can use behavioral techniques to help clients invest in a disciplined way and stay focused on the long-term strategy.
This will become increasingly important as millennials and Gen. Z-ers increase their share of wealth and look for a higher level of service and more holistic solutions than what traditional financial planning institutions or robo-advisor platforms may offer.
Prince: What are tactics that financial advisors can use to prospect for new clients and grow their businesses?
Crawford: What independent advisors are up against right now, particularly with younger generations of investors, is the notion that everyone is a stock-picker and can invest for the future themselves. To articulate their value, advisors need a core methodology that can reveal to potential clients that do-it-yourself investing is potentially dangerous; it is often the result of a temptation to follow the herd and buy hot stocks when the market is up, or panic when the market goes down and sell at the worst possible time.
This is why we believe that advisors should be coaches for their clients. To do this impactfully, they must first be coaches for their employees and align everyone in their business on their firm’s purpose. This means connecting with all employees on the company’s mission and how everyone can work towards executing it. Once the team is aligned—not just the advisors at a firm, but everyone on the team: from reception to operations—advisors can take the next step in building deeper relationships with clients and prospecting for new ones.
Just as bringing teams together on a company’s purpose can strengthen an advisor’s business, so too can bringing clients and prospects together. We believe that there’s power in group events where participants interact with one another, share experiences, and discover what may be holding them back from peace of mind with their finances.
Learning about prudent investing principles alongside others considering making financial changes in their lives can have a much greater impact for clients and prospects than a one-on-one meeting with an advisor. That’s why we recommend businesses consider putting resources into community events that encourage relationship building, and personal sharing, and ultimately inspire participants to learn not just how to follow an investing strategy but learn about themselves—how past experiences have affected their current attitudes towards money and how to change these patterns to become a prudent investor. If you want your client to have a powerful life, you have to help them gain a vision of a powerful future.
We believe that aligning with employees and then using educational events to deliver transparency on your investing strategy, all while expressing your passion for helping clients, is what can make a difference for independent advisors in their quest to energize their businesses and foster growth.
RUSS ALAN PRINCE is the Executive Director of Private Wealth magazine (pw-mag.com) and Chief Content Officer for High-Net-Worth Genius (hnwgenius.com). He consults with family offices, the wealthy, fast-tracking entrepreneurs, and select professionals.