Are You a “Boring” Advisor? How Jesse Hurst Uses Pop Culture to Make Finance Memorable

Do your clients ever glaze over when you explain markets, risk, or retirement?

In this episode of Advisors Off Script, Shelby Nicholl sits down with Jesse Hurst, CFP®, CEO of Impel Wealth Management, to unpack a simple (and surprisingly effective) way to make your message land: use pop culture to make complex financial ideas memorable.

Jesse shares how his writing cadence ramped up during COVID, why an Animal House reference helped explain the CARES Act, and how a Led Zeppelin lyric made an “international vs. U.S. stocks” update stick with a 73-year-old client. The bigger lesson: credibility isn’t the problem in this industry, memorability is.

You’ll learn:

• How to use humor and pop culture without losing credibility
• Why adding a simple YouTube link can pull in the “non-finance spouse”
• How consistency builds trust (and can reduce panicky client calls)
• Why your clients want your perspective, not generic marketing commentary
• Jesse’s content system for finding hooks and turning ideas into posts

If you want clients to remember what you said and feel more connected to your voice, this is the playbook.

Hosted by Shelby Nicholl. Produced and edited by Aaron Sherman. Operations and Guest Coordination by Shelly Hadel.

Transcript

0:06

Do you ever worry that you might be a little boring? You're sitting across from a client, you're explaining something important, markets and risk and retirement, and you can almost see it happening. Their eyes are glazing over. They're nodding politely. You're thinking to yourself, gosh, how do I get this to land? Being credible isn't the problem in our industry, but being memorable is Today's guest is Jesse Hurst, CEO of Impel Wealth Management. He's a top financial advisor who has cracked the code on how to blend pop culture with finance for a very memorable client experience. If you wanna be more yourself, more entertaining and more impactful, this episode is for you. well welcome Jesse to the podcast. I'm delighted you're here. Thank you so much. Looking forward to our conversation. you know, people really struggle with. the client's eyes just sort of glazing over. It sounds like you probably recognized that in some form or fashion when you were younger and you're like, okay, I don't wanna I, I want them to get it. I want them to really understand what we're talking about. Did you ever worry that it was like gonna. your credibility at all? Uh, not as much as my wife did. Hmm. Interesting. so when we started that firm in 1997, my two partners were 46 and 48, and I was 31 at the time. I was the kid, right? So by the time we got to 2016, 2017, they were retiring out and then I took my team, my clients informed in Powell Wealth Management, my firm today and. then in 2020 when COVID hit. you couldn't be face to face with people right? Two weeks to bend the curve and then you couldn't see clients for months. And so I doubled down and started writing, two a week just to kind of try to fill the gap between what they were hearing out there in the news and noise of the media, and us not being able to be face-to-face with them as much as we had been. And in March of 2020, at the very end of that month, the government passed the CARES Act, which was all the stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment and PPP loans and all that. And Jay Powell, the, the Federal Reserve Bank chairman, and Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary at the time, did a joint press conference and they said, this is not a conventional recession. it's an unconventional. you know, economic catastrophe and we're gonna have to fight it with unconventional weapons. And the first thing that popped into my head was the scene in Animal House where Otter says to the guy, the frat brothers, after they've been kicked out off campus, he goes, now we could fight them with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. And so I wrote a blog post comparing the actions of the Federal Reserve Bank and the federal government to the frat brothers. And my wife thought I was crazy 'cause she, she edits. Everything I write and she's like, are you sure you wanna do this? Not, not everybody will think, a little out yeah, right. I'm like, no, no, no. It's funny, trust me. And people loved it. Right? So, last fall, I had written a blog post about about how international stocks had outperformed us stocks by a wide margin for the first time in years and years and years. And I used the Led Zeppelin song, rock and Roll. It's been a long time, been a long, lonely, lonely time. Right. So the next week I have one of my retired clients. She's a 73-year-old retired school teacher walking into my office. She goes, I sung Led Zeppelin songs around my house all week last week because of your blog post. And I'm like, perfect. Right? That's, that's what you want, is that it made it relatable and fun. And some 73-year-old lady sang Led Zeppelin songs because she read a economic blog post of mine. Right? How wild. That's awesome. Yeah. you brought such joy to her in those moments and then you know, she got to have a completely different. working that through. That's amazing. Yeah. do you, why do you think that pop culture, like why do you think this approach is working so well? Is it the humor in it? Is it the music? What, why does it work? I think it's both. I think I, I, there's always, almost always. Some humor to what I do with it, right?'cause I, I think the last thing the world needs is another dry, boring numbers, charts based economic blog, right? Um, there's plenty of those out there if somebody wants to read them, but I think the humor is part of it. And then I almost always include a YouTube link to either the scene I'm talking about or the song I'm talking about. And my wife and I were having, Rochelle and I were having dinner with a couple last year who were just maybe a year or two older than us, and they were both retiring, so we took them to dinner he does most of their financial, my, you know, oversees their finances and stuff, and she comes to like every second or third meeting, mostly because he drags her or whatever. And I said something about a blog post that I had written and she said, I love that blog post. It was, it was funny. And he looked at her and he goes, you read what Jesse writes? And she goes. Because, 'cause she doesn't pay that much attention to the finance. She goes, I can't wait every week to click the YouTube link to see what the song or the video is that he tied his blog post to. And I'm like, Hey look, if somebody who hates finances and doesn't pay attention reads and clicks through because of that, I'm good. Right? Yeah. That's super special. I mean, then you've, you've engaged her in a way that like worked for her. You've created this memory of it, Yeah. you've also been able to create this relationship with her that is so much deeper just because you are, you are sending those out. Like she will trust you so much more because she's had this like content from you along the way. Yep. Yep. So, yeah, so I have a lot of fun with them. I wrote one here just recently. the Treasury Department, announced that they were gonna stop making pennies, right? And because it cost like 3.40 cents to, to create a one set bed, right? And so I used the, the Beatles song, penny Lane, to, to say, Hey, what are your memories of pennies as a kid? And tell me stories about, and people wrote in and told us about their piggy banks and their paper routes and what they remember about. About pennies and the interesting thing is, my son who was the touring Broadway actor, he was also, he was a trumpet player in marching band in high school. and he got to play the trumpet solo in Penny Lane. So you tell the story and people ask about it, and it's, it's just fun. It's just, yeah. it's connection points with people that make you real, like people. People will read that and they go, oh, that sounds just like something Jesse would say. Hmm. like, you know, it kind of makes you a real person to them. So that's super interesting'cause you said, okay, it sounds like something Jesse would say. So there's this true, authentic element to it, Yeah, you didn't, you're just bringing in all these facets of yourself into the conversation. It's, I think a lot of people are really afraid to do that. You know, they're afraid to be too authentic. They're afraid they're gonna lose credibility. How did you decide to not be afraid? that's actually a great question. One of the things I noticed years ago, I've done this 38 years now. I noticed probably 15, 20 years ago was kind of around the time it started kind of crystallizing in my head that right now I oversee about 140 client families. I, I oversee about $400 million of investment assets. If you told me that. Rochelle and I had to go to dinner and spend an evening with any one of those 140 clients. There's probably 137 of them that I'd go, great. Love them. They are fun people. They, they, Rochelle, and I'll have a ball with them. There's probably three where you kinda go, really? But, but it, that's a pretty good batting average. those Yeah. Yeah. Think probably now. but you sit there and you go. People tend to resonate and draw to people that they connect with, right? Yeah. if you're drawing people who come to you because of who you are, what your process is, what your personality is, what your communication style is, why not let that shine? Because that's part of why they came to begin with, right? they came to you because of that authentic voice. And that's part of why. I love writing. Writing in general is I see. And I'm gonna pick on marketing teams from various broker dealers, including my own right. We have a marketing team at Satera called Marketing Central, and I love the people who run it. They're some of my very good friends and they're very good at what they do. But it's very funny that you can tell when they drop a new post because I can go to LinkedIn and I can see seven or eight different advisors from SAT who all dropped the same post within two days of each other. And I go, man, I hope I'm never in that spot. Right? I want, I think people come to us because they want to know what we think. They don't wanna know what Marketing Central thinks they want. They come to us for our authentic voice and for leadership. Right? And that's what we try to provide. Do you keep it pretty consistent? Like do you have a formula that you're sort of following for your content and so that you're saying, Hey, this is my voice and this is how I want it to be, or do you just kind of write and blend this in so super organically and naturally because it's just you? It, it's, it's a little bit of both. so as I read, right, and I, and I read a lot, right? I, I actually just did a blog post on the importance of reading, just because statistics show how few young people read anymore. that one. And, uh, and it was based on Charlie Munger who was, Warren Buffett's partner and how much time the two of them spend reading. so I generally read six to 800 pages a month of economic and political commentary, just because I like saying current with things. So writing. Helps me assimilate my thought process around what I've read. So I always, and this is gonna sound crazy, but I always have a stack of stuff where I look at it and go like, literally this stack here are articles and charts and different studies that I've seen that I go. Man, that would be a great article. That would be something fun to write about. Right? And then usually it's pretty easy for me to pick up the social media, hook in it. So I usually start with the social media, if I think about. a blog post that I, that I've written, uh, late, right? One, one that that comes to mind. If you remember last April, um, when we were going through, uh, the trade tariff downturn, right? Stock market from, from February 19th to April 8th, dropped 20% intraday, uh, closing basis. It was just a little less than that, but people were panicked, right? Right. so you, you mentioned it earlier, right? If, if. If I started in the business in August of 87 and six, seven weeks later, the stock market crash of 87 comes and then there's been two Persian Gulf wars.com nine 11, Enron, WorldCom, A IG, Lehman Brothers, fiscal Cliff, COVID, whatever, Russia, Ukraine, and, and all of that. Every time one of those events happens, the media screams, right? The stock market pulls back the, maybe the economy slows and the media screams and people wanna panic. So I wrote a blog post at that time using the REM song, and I called the blog post. It's not the end of the world as we know it, right? And so. I took a chart and showed all the crises from 1987 when I started forward, and you chart that against the trajectory of the market. And you go like this, we've been here before. This is okay. Right? And you have to have a strategy to make sure you have, especially for your retired clients that are drawing income, right? You have to have a strategy for being able to create and manage liquidity and income needs during that time period. So I, talked about the song, the REM song, tied it to, you know, if you've paid any attention to the political commentary in the markets over the last 60 days, you might think the end of the world is coming again. But it's, as I've looked, as I reflected over all of these events that have happened over the last 35 years, it's not the first time we've been told that. And guess what? Every time we were told that. The end of the world was once again delayed, right? Like it ha didn't happen, right? Like, like so, so you know, if you panic and follow what everybody else does, you'll get the results that everybody else has. And if the, if the masses were wealthy, if the masses are right, were right, the masses would be wealthy. By and large, the masses are not wealthy. So let's maybe think about an alternative thought process and alternative actions. you know, one of the things we talk about in the. Industry all the time is that there's this organic growth problem, right? And so people are looking for tools and finney's and smart referral systems all over the place, Yeah. try to figure out how to grow organically. But you've sort of developed an approach and you're acting on that approach. In our world, I'm a big believer that most people don't wake up one day at 43 years old or 52 years old and go, geez, I should probably get a financial planner. Right? There is usually some triggering event that causes them to say that, right? I'm getting an inheritance. I'm having a child or a grandchild, or you know, I got an early retirement buyout, or I received an inheritance and all of a sudden. I have something that I don't know about and I need to find somebody to talk to. It's interesting how many of these come in kind of hybrid where somebody says, I talked with a friend, or you know, somebody who's a colleague that I have confidence in, and they gave me your name and when they gave me your name, I knew who you were.'cause I'd seen your social media posts, right? Yeah. it's not that they came strictly from the social media posts, but the social media posts gave us kind of top of mind awareness to them when that triggering event happened. They, and somebody gave them our name as a referral. They're like, oh, I know those guys. Right? we had somebody who was referred into us just two weeks ago, and I didn't even know she did this, right. she was sitting in our office meeting with me and one of the other certified financial planners, and I thought she was looking at. iPhone. Right. And apparently she took a picture of being in our office. She took like a selfie of herself in the office and she posted it to Facebook and said, Hey, I'm doing the adult thing. I met, went and met with the financial planners of in PE Wealth Management today, and it was funny because four of our clients that we didn't even know knew her. Saw the post and all said amazing things about us. And then it got out to other places uh, know, one of the things I'm thinking about too, going back to your writing and, yeah. much you do with your blog, et cetera, you're very consistent about it. Do you think some of your success, or how much of your success is from, like, the consistency of it versus the sort of charisma of it? that's a, that's another really good question, and I think. It's probably some of both. I think first of all, it's fun and people like reading them, but I think on top of that, they come to expect that once or twice a week they're gonna hear something from me. So Yeah. this expectation and you get the click through. Rates are much higher than my understanding from my marketing PR firm is that our click through rates are, Several times industry averages and so forth. So, you know, and, most blog posts that I send out, I'll get three to five, five to seven messages from clients who either. Uh, related a memory or said, Hey, I really love that. I literally got a message from a client this morning that said, uh, very informative weekly newsletter. Love the information on AI and new innovation. Went to a website you suggested. Um, and thanks for taking your time to give us weekly newsletters in order to keep us informed, right? Like that literally just came this morning from, from a client. And I, you know, when you get that and you get that kind of reinforcement and people are getting value from it. Here's one of the other things that I think is really interesting is we live in a world where, Demand for our client services is inversely, relational or proportional to how well the markets are doing right when the markets are up a bunch. Everybody's good that I looked at my accounts, I feel good, you know, I'm not gonna bother Jesse with something or whatever, but right. You go through, you think about where things were in October of 22 or March, April of 20, after COVID, you think about 22 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Fed started raising interest rates and the stock market dropped 26% between January 3rd and October 12th. And during those times. When markets are down the most and things are most volatile, you're making less money.'cause you get paid based on assets under management, right? But it's when you need your team and your staff the most, you can't cut expenses 'cause you've gotta service the heck out of people at that point. But what I've found is. between our monthly investment committee notes that go out to our clients every month so they know what our investment committee's doing, what trades we're making, what our thoughts are around the economy, and the markets and their portfolios, along with the blog posts. I find that it cuts our call volume dramatically.'cause people go, oh, they're on top of it. They know what's going on. They keep in touch with us all the time. So we're not getting the panicky phone calls, from somebody like we normally do. Well, and you've created a relationship already through that. Those, those written words, right? Like they're used to seeing that. They already are trusting it and they trust you. It's also not that you're sending a blast email that's like out of. Out of sync or out of the norm. Right. Yeah. might even like raise the client's anxiety. Yeah. your, your blast emails are a regularly occurring thing that clients are used to and, and look forward to, and so it's a natural place for them to get reassured. Yeah. Can I give you a funny story from last? Okay. So April 7th, eighth, last year, the, the market kind of hit the bottom after the Liberation Day trade tariff stuff. yeah. so I'd written this blog post about the history of the markets and kind of volatility events and how markets, this was something I was told when I was brand new in the business in 1987, my first sales manager said, if you look at a 60 year chart of the stock market, it looks like a man walking up a hill bouncing a yo-yo. Right? he goes, you know, the short term events are like the yo-yo and the long term is where the market goes, and you gotta pay attention to the hill, not the yo-yo, right? And so I kind of used something like that. And I said, you know, from my 38 years in the, in doing this, I said, you know, the market's done this, but we've had all of these events. But over time I used the Joe Walsh song. Life's been Good. Like, life's been good to me so far. Right? and we published it on and we had, scheduled this. In advance.'cause I knew I was traveling. It went out on April 7th and it was called Life's Been Good for Stocks and then it was, it came out the day the market bottomed in that trade. Oh gosh. And so I got a couple of emails from clients going, well, things don't look real good for the stock market now. And I'm like. Guys, you're missing the point. This was exactly the point is that yes, there are these volatility events and there have been 22 of them in the last 37 years, but the market's still done this over time. So I had to have a couple of conversations with clients and these were also clients that hated Trump anyway, so it was, you know, that kind of just gave them fodder for, uh, for what was going on. their viewpoint. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. it's, it's fascinating how you also have brought in so much data. So you're a writer and a creative, you bring in the data, you make it kind of fun, and people are are getting it. And so we're not getting that glazed overlook, I wanna also zoom in into something very specific that you did, which was your book. you know, there are so many advisors who think about writing a book, so many advisors who start a book but don't quite finish it. What was the process like of writing. If you take a look at the cover of it, you see there's all these puzzle pieces on the front of it, and I, I wrote the book. About the 12 chapters in the book are the 12 puzzle pieces that you need to put together to create your unique retirement, uh, success story and, um. Writing the book was actually kind of fun. I had a writing coach. not a ghost writer, but I, the publishing company that I worked with. I would develop a chapter at a time and submit it to 'em and we'd talk about transitions from stories or chapters to the next chapter and so forth. it took about. 8, 8, 9 months to write the book. it took almost that long to go through four rounds of editing, which just find a sharp object or a tall building. Like I can't stand it. if it wasn't for my wife or she, I never would've gotten through it. Right? I mean, I had good publishing, company and good people to work with, but, that part's, I'm just not that. Minute detail, you know, is this con, should this be a comma here, or should this be a semicolon? It's like, I had a great thought there. Just pay attention to what I wrote. Right? Like, like, so it took that long. You know, it is funny 'cause people would say, what was your favorite part of this? And it'd be like, since I wrote that book, I've written a hundred blog posts. There's been like, so much cool stuff I've done since then. Right? Like, my marketing PR person asked me, to come up with a visual for why I wrote the book, when I've written blog posts for all these years and I, uh, I pulled out a, a, a 45 record, right? Like you remember the old little 45, right? I said, the 45 is your blog post, right? It's a story. It's a, it's a point in time. It's just a moment, right? And then I pulled out the album that that 45 came from, and the album's the story, right? That's the book. It's the start to finish. And it allows you to take you somebody from, how do I determine where I am? To, what are the things I need to think about to, to aspire to a, a successful transition from work life to retirement life, to what are the steps I have to take to make that a reality and walk people through that? You can't do that in a blog post, right? Now, what advice do you have for somebody, for an advisor who wants to write a book? Right? Like what's something that they maybe misunderstand or something that you would absolutely recommend they do if they wanna go out and write a book? unless they have a really strong idea that they think they can push through on their own, I would find a publishing company or a book writing coach to help you get through, just to hold you accountable to help you with. Structure and timeline and to especially help you with the editing process. like I said, 'cause I mean like the first, like I said, there were four rounds of edits, right? So one of 'em was just the content edit. Does the story flow? Does this. Does this story flow to this story? Okay. And is the transition okay within this chapter? And then from chapter to chapter and so forth, then you get into things like the, um, the grammar edit and so forth, which is just long and painstaking and brutal. But then it's the, all the bibliography stuff. It's all the citations, right? Because when you write a book about finances and you, here's, here's something that I found that was really. you're a data person, you are probably referring to lots of Oh yeah, there's lots of charts and graphs and so forth in the book. Now here's something that's really interesting and I'm so thankful for, for my wife Rochelle on this is. If I had a chart from BlackRock or the American Funds or whatever, you'd have to go get permission from them to use that chart, right? Which, and they all wanna charge you a fee, and it could take forever and so forth. But if you know the data sources for it. You could go to the data sources and she could go to chat GPT and create the chart and she owned it. Right? So, you know, we could, we could use that and that solved a bunch. There's like 260 citations in the book that you just wanna make sure you're staying legal with and so forth. So like, if you're not really up on that. It's really hard to get that across the finish line on your own if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, that makes sense. I wanna bring it all together for, for our listeners. So, you know, a lot of our listeners are advisors who are thinking about going independent. They're advisors who are in growth mode, thinking about adding advisors to their practice, et cetera. They are trying to do something different, trying to live a life that's a little bit off script. How have all of these things kind of come together for you to create the growth in your practice? I think one of the things is. Is, find what you are good at, right? you, you remember the name Ron Carson from Carson Group, right? I started in the Ron Carson coaching program in oh two. And one of the things Ron used to say is he said, you know, a lot of people will tell you to work on your weaknesses. So, and he goes, I don't understand why you'd want to have strong weaknesses.'cause usually things that you're weak at aren't things that you like good doing and you're not naturally good at. He goes. Find people who are good at those things so you can focus on the things you're really good at. And that's what I've tried to do here. Right? So for me, the marketing and public relations is part of what I'm naturally drawn to. And naturally I don't say good at, but like I enjoy doing. Right? And I've been told lots of times in lots of formats that, that it's something we're, we're good at and unique at. But if it's not your thing. I, I think it'd be hard to try to force that you'd either have to outsource it, like I outsource it, like I outsource compliance. but if you can't do it in an authentic voice, it will be evident, right? Like it, which is why I always kind of laugh about when I see. Advisors pushing out, Hey, here's a commentary from JP Morgan Chase, or Here's a commentary from Schwab or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with those, and I love reading stuff from David Kelly and Lizanne Saunders or whatever. Right. Really smart people. But that's not who my clients hired. My clients hired me, right? And they wanna know what I think and what I'm, what I'm doing. So if you can't do it, you're gonna have to find somebody to outsource it. But I, I'd say stay in your lane. Stay with what you enjoy, focus there and hire around you for the things that you're, that aren't your natural strengths. Yeah, super smart. I was just listening, um, earlier today to an, uh, a podcast interview and it reminded me of the book by, I think it's Gay Hendrix called The Big Leap, Okay. all about being in your zone of genius and staying in that zone of genius. So, you know, I know what my zone of genius is, and then I need to, to your point, higher around me. It's the same thing for anybody who's running that business. And so, finding, finding that is so important. Yeah. Completely agree. this was so fantastic, Jesse. Thank you so much. Thanks for, for showing us that Economics and finance does not have to be lacking in personality, and that success in in our business doesn't have to be boring. Yeah. thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you so much for having me. It was a great time and it went fast. It did, it did. And, and to our listeners, if your practice is solid, but your messaging maybe feels a little flat, if your clients are trusting you but still kind of glazing over, maybe the answer isn't another tool. Maybe it's being more like Jesse, showing up truly as yourself. Hope you'll, us next time. This is Advisors Off Script, a podcast, and a playbook for your business. Thanks for joining us.