Joe Moss is the Co-founder of Pro Advisor Suite, a group of independent RIAs brought together to save money, simplify tech selection, and provide discounts on innovative tech solutions. He is the curator of Conneqtor, a community for financial advisors.
As an RIA operator and industry expert, Joe is committed to positioning financial advisors and advisory tech companies for success in the digital world. He equips them with the tools, innovation, and community they require — enabling them to focus on delivering exceptional client care.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Joe Moss discusses how Pro Advisor Suite helps people
The benefits of joining the Pro Advisor Suite community
How to build and manage a community that retains members
What is Conneqtor and what do they offer?
Joe talks about the impacts of AI in the financial services industry
The ideation of Pro Advisor Suite
LinkedIn strategies and personal branding
In this episode…
As a financial advisor, consistently growing your business can be a challenge. It entails building a client base, juggling finances, staying up-to-date on industry trends, and maintaining profit. Fortunately, the community business model can help you overcome these challenges.
One of the biggest challenges of growing a business as a financial advisor is staying relevant in a rapidly changing industry. Joe Moss says that by joining an RIA community, you can stay on top of the latest trends and best practices. You can learn from other advisors who have successfully navigated the financial industry and tap into their knowledge and experience. By staying connected, you can position yourself as a trusted advisor and build a loyal client base.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker sits down with Joe Moss, Co-founder of Pro Advisor Suite, to discuss how financial advisors can scale by joining a community. Joe discusses how Pro Advisor Suite helps people, the community business model, how to build and manage a community, and the Conneqtor.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
"Simplifying How Financial Advisors Connect With Clients With Derek Notman of Couplr" on The Customer Wins
"Financial Planning Reimagined With Adam Holt of Asset-Map" on The Customer Wins
"How Being High-Tech Leads To Being High-Touch With Customers" with Philipp Hecker on The Customer Wins
"Simplifying Business Processes for Financial Advisors With Louis Retief" on The Customer Wins
Sponsor for this episode...
This is brought to you by Quik!
At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.
Using our FormXtract API, you can submit your completed forms and get clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate.
Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.
Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.
Go to www.quickforms.com to learn more, or contact us with questions at support@quikforms.com.
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:12
Hi, I'm Rich Walker host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers when and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Derek Notman of Couplr Adam Holt of Asset-Map, Philipp Hecker of Bento Engine and Louis Retief of Hubly. Today I'm speaking with Joe Moss, co-founder of Pro Advisor Suite and curator of the Conneqtor community. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time reviewing the forms. Instead get Quik! using our Form Xtract API. simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started. And now to meet our guest. Joe Moss is the co-founder of Pro Advisor Suite and the curator of Conneqtor community, you can easily find job posting on LinkedIn scheduling tech demos, talking with advisors about their tech stack, and promoting community and innovation in the advisor tech space. With Joe's passion for problem-solving and helping others understand the value and optimizing their tech solution. He's developed a broad knowledge of our industry. Today, Joe helps advisors navigate the increasingly complex advisor tech landscape. Joe is a West Virginia native now living in Lexington, Kentucky with his wife, Amanda and their three children. Joe and his family are also active in their local church, the Trinity Christian Fellowship, Joe, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Joe Moss 1:47
Thanks for having me, Rich, I'm excited for this conversation.
Richard Walker 1:50
Me too. Now, if you haven't heard this podcast before I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Joe, we all want to understand your business little better. How does your company help people?
Joe Moss 2:07
Okay, so I've been thinking about this question. And I think a lot of time on LinkedIn, people get a little bit existential, like they're helping, they're serving they're giving. But in reality, we're all in this to make money. I mean, we work so that we can make money so that we can pay our mortgage pair rent pay our grocery bills. And I think at the end of the day, I helped two sets of people, I help advisors make more money, and then I help the software companies that serve advisors make more money. So I'm gonna go real base level there.
Richard Walker 2:39
No, I love it. I mean, you're right business is at the fundamental, it's about finances about how do you have revenue? How do you grow? But ultimately, you're doing something, you're doing something for these two communities to bring them together so they can make money together? What do you think is the catalyst that brings them together?
Joe Moss 2:56
Yeah. So I would say I connect the two. I mean, I think from the advisor perspective, I do tech stack consulting, the tech stack for financial advisor can be long and complicated, and overlapping tools. And I think it's helpful just to have a second opinion, look at your tech stack, some of its looked at maybe 100, other tech stacks, and get advice on that and then get introduced to new tools. So from that from the adviser side, and then from the adviser tech side, I help bring awareness to the service that they're offering, and get it in front of more advisors. So hopefully, and I don't want to sell something to an advisor, it's not a good fit, or doesn't fit their clientele. So sometimes they'll even come to me and be like, I'm looking at this tool, which may be one that I represent, but I'm like, well, that's not the best fit for you. So, helping them win for sure. And then also helping my advisor tech clients win.
Richard Walker 3:54
Joe, I love that mindset. And I do the same for my customers. In fact, I'll be just blunt with them and say, I'm not interested in making a sale. I'm interested in providing a solution and helping us solve a problem. And if we're not, it will be the first to tell you we're not it. And I think that kind of honesty builds trust, and rapport, and is probably why you're such a great connector in the community. So let's talk about Pro Advisor Suite. What is it?
Joe Moss 4:19
Yeah, so Pro Advisor Suite, I think what resonates the best is it's like the Costco advisor tech. So, you become a member and then you've got access to all these great deals. So the deals would be on specific advisor tech programs. So that's the core of it. And then on top of that, we've got demos, we've gotten joint demos with multiple companies. So it's kind of an educational platform, also bringing out like new tools. So if there's a tool that's coming to market, and kind of like advance, look at new tools coming out. So that's another aspect to it.
Richard Walker 4:56
Okay, so these tools who do they appeal to most broker dealer Is RIAs independent advisors, staff people?
Joe Moss 5:03
So it's an interesting question because I mean, any financial advisor in general, but specifically the ones that have control of their tech stack. A lot of broker-dealer hybrid situations don't necessarily control what tech they purchase. So, a lot of times, I end up working with completely independent firms, because they can pick their entire tech stack top to bottom.
Richard Walker 5:26
Okay, so that could be broker-dealers who allow that flexibility, but definitely RIAs then Right. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So look, I have a kind of a tough question. If an advisor has already got a CRM, and they come to Pro Advisor Suite, they're not going to get a discount on the purchase they've already made, right? I mean, the discount they're gonna get on new products, right? Or is there something?
Joe Moss 5:50
So yeah, it's a great question. And one that, when we went to market, it was an interesting sell at time. So we do want the tech companies to give discounts on current clients, we don't expect them to give a refund, like if they've paid a year in advance or something, we don't expect them to give a 10% discount on money that's already been paid. But going forward, like when they renew, we are expecting a 10% discount to go into effect because the remember the community.
Richard Walker 6:20
Nice. So there is that benefit, then that your current tech stack could benefit you by being part of this community? For sure. Yeah. Now, is there more to it than that? I mean, is it a community where people can converse and ask questions and get help with each other?
Joe Moss 6:32
Yeah. So another part that I feel like is really cool is that we've got like tech founders, people that work at tech companies, talking to the actual users, the advisors, the ops managers of the software, and working things out or scheduling time offline. And I feel like that is happening in communities, it's not even necessarily happening on like LinkedIn, like, people are just more open to be like, hey, I need this in this software, can you make this happen, and they can actually, like, discuss it, which I think is pretty cool. We also have companies like coming into the community to find out what advisors are talking about. So, they can search a certain phrase or a certain company, and bring up all the past posts, videos, etc, about that topic.
Richard Walker 7:21
Okay. Now, look, I am part of your community, I am on the skool.com platform for these things you're doing. And I think it's a really interesting platform. But from your perspective, tell people why it's different than LinkedIn, why can't LinkedIn do what you're doing?
Joe Moss 7:39
I guess, like a walled garden, in a way. I mean, LinkedIn is for anybody and everybody. And I think within Skool, it's like a specific group of people. So that's an interesting question. I was gonna think about that a little bit.
Richard Walker 7:53
I also think I mean, just to add to this, my own perspective is that you have this continuity of discussion in your environment that you don't get a LinkedIn. Like, if you've read a post on LinkedIn, you can see comments and stuff, but it's hard to find that post three months from now. Whereas I think in your community, it's so much easier to see it. And there's also the membership aspect where you can engage with people more directly, whereas LinkedIn does put up some barriers to that if you're not connected to them, right.
Joe Moss 8:18
Yeah, so I guess the communities have a specific purpose. A specific topic has specific purpose. And then, you can have different communities but with a slightly different purpose. So like, the community, I started out with RIA operators. When I started the Pro Advisor Suite community, people were like, well, wait a minute, what's the difference between these two communities? Let's take well, this one is like all operations, maybe with a focus on CRM, specifically. And this one is like strictly tech, like advisor tech stuff. Not necessarily operations-related. So yeah, it helps to have like a specific purpose for a specific person to like, if you want a bunch of doctors and attorneys coming into the advisor tech community, because it just doesn't make sense.
Richard Walker 9:09
They're not gonna ask the same questions. That's so true. So you've really piqued my interest because you post an article about the rise of communities as a business model. So I'm curious how you see the community business model, what does it mean and should others be doing it?
Joe Moss 9:26
Yeah, so Alex Hormozi some people may know him some may not he's a fairly famous like business coach type person in the entrepreneur space I guess. He just made a significant investment in Skool and he had a quote something like Skool makes like it's the easiest way to start a business ever using Skool. Basically, he's like, I've been looking for years on the easiest way to start a business and now Skool has provided so I think that's and it's it is around like a top three you create a community around a specific topic, you start to build a free membership. And at some point, once there's significant value significant conversations, you can make your community paid. And all the payments and stuff is handled by Skool. And you can just increase your price as the value goes up and make a decent amount of income from a paid community.
Richard Walker 10:21
And Skool. It's skool.com. Right? Yeah. So that's a platform for communities if you wanted to build a community, and I've seen others, like circle, I might actually have a membership on circle for different type of community. But I really like what Skool is doing to make it easy for somebody to say, I'm gonna start a community. Okay, but it's one thing to sign up and start doing it. What are the activities? How do you become successful with this? How do you attract people into your community and build it?
Joe Moss 10:50
So yeah, you got to have interesting content. I think this is kind of marketing in general. But in order for people to come to your community, you've got to have something going on that they want to see or be a part of. So, I typically start my communities with a series of giveaways. So like, I'll give away books or something related to the topic of the community, and they have this leaderboard system built in. So basically, like the top 10 people that are hosting the most interacting, the most will show up on the leaderboard, and then I give the giveaway to those people like on a monthly basis. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is people will have like a webinar, but they'll only let people that join the community attend the webinar. So basically, it's kind of like a lead magnet in website terms. But basically, like, hey, come to this webinar, and you get to the webinar by joining the community.
Richard Walker 11:45
That makes sense. Do you think financial advisors should have their own community? I mean, that's gonna be hard from a regulatory standpoint, but I'm just wondering what you think about that?
Joe Moss 11:54
Yeah, I mean, it may seem a bit exaggerated, but I feel like almost every online business should have a community, just a place for your prospects or for your niche to hang out to learn more about what you do kind of thing.
Richard Walker 12:07
Yeah, we were thinking about doing that here at Quik!. And we have a very interesting niche in the forms space. So we're thinking about bringing people together who care about forms. I mean, really, nobody grew up saying I want to grow up and do forms for living, but there are people who do and we're one of them. So we're thinking about doing a community like that. But it seems a little daunting at the same time, like, how much time do you put in to manage and curate content and manage the people in the memberships? Is that a full-time thing? Or is that just a couple hours a week?
Joe Moss 12:41
That's a good question. But I'm part of a couple communities now. So I'm running a couple. I mean, it's like LinkedIn, like you could spend eight hours a day on LinkedIn, or you can spend 30 minutes a day. So I think it could become a lot, but I think it's part of an overall marketing strategy. And it's exactly like LinkedIn. Like, if you want to get engagement you post regularly like, like daily. And also, you've got to comment and like and share and do all the interaction-type stuff that you would do on a platform like LinkedIn.
Richard Walker 13:13
Yeah. So what's Conneqtor community? That's your other one, right?
Joe Moss 13:17
Yeah. So Conneqtor is a platform that Derek Notman started, I wouldn't say platform, actually, it's a course that Derek Notman started to help advisors, transition their businesses from like, in-person to virtual. And he kind of was like the leader in the space because he would travel around the world and take exotic pictures of him working on his laptop on a train on the beach. And he launched Conneqtor, like right before COVID, I believe he launched at the end of 2019. So I think that there was a really good transition for advisors going into COVID, to realize that there was an opportunity to work virtually. And his course has just really in that training all the way from like setting up your desk, to the software you use to the virtual sales process to how to run a webinar, to writing an eBook, like, really in-depth, basically everything he thought someone would need to know to become like a virtual advisor.
Richard Walker 14:17
Okay, so now you're managing that, and people are still going through that transition. Right? They're still trying to figure that out.
Joe Moss 14:24
Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting when you take over someone's product or community, at some point, you have to figure out, you know, what was his mission? And then what's my mission with this community? So I think that that foundation of like, running a virtual business is a really strong foundation. And I think beyond that, kind of my mission of just like helping people grow. One of my mottos kind of across all my businesses is like up into the right, just like with the increasing graph, so yeah, that's kind of what I'm hoping with connector as well. Plus, I love the word Conneqtor, you know the misspelled Conneqtor. Because I feel like on LinkedIn, that's my goal is to be kind of a connector.
Richard Walker 15:10
Well, you are you definitely are. And one of the things I admire about you is that when you engage with people, it's not just a high, you go in and ask specific questions like you've asked me really good questions, just in a comment on LinkedIn. And I started thinking about like, wow, that must be one of the most powerful ways to engage people and get people to see you. Because now you started the dialogue, not just hey, nice post, but you said, what was it that made you think that or etc? How did you develop that skill? I mean, is that a natural thing you could do? Or did you learn that somewhere?
Joe Moss 15:43
That's a good question. So it is interesting, because I've been involved in online communities like even way before this. Like a while ago, I was like a Dave Ramsey. Coach, I took his like, financial coaching program in the Dave Ramsey coaching community. And I would write stuff that just got incredible engagement, because I just, I guess I saw holes in the whole system. When something is pitched a certain way, and you realize on the back end is like not actually true, or it's just when you tell the truth, people like really jump on the bandwagon. So I guess, identifying issues. Katie and my former boss at complicity, Alex is like, you just have a really good way of simplifying complex things. So maybe it's some of that.
Richard Walker 16:36
That may be a gift, it reminds me of improv comedy. The highest form of truth is actually what's funny on stage. And I think asking people direct questions and getting them to talk about things behind it is way more engaging. There's a question I like to ask, which is about artificial intelligence, but it's making me think about the types of tools that are out there. There's a tool now that I forget which one it is, you can have a plug-in in your Chrome browser, and it will write your comments and posts for you, especially comments on people's posts on LinkedIn. Have you played with any of those tools?
Joe Moss 17:10
I think I know which one you're talking about. I also don't know the name. I did play with it. I wasn't impressed with the. And I think that's where AI breaks down. Honestly, it's like, when you're writing a LinkedIn post that's going to be very engaging, AI just can't write that. Like, because AI is not creative. I guess that's what I would say AI is very, like, boring, like tight and dry. Like, because it can only pull from other content, basically, where when you're writing really good LinkedIn content, like it's got to be very personal, very creative, very engaging. So I haven't found AI to be great at writing that kind of content.
Richard Walker 17:51
So I've just started this last week, actually, I've had a year of recording podcasts. So I have over 52 episodes recorded at this point. And I decided to put all the transcripts into a GPT model. And one of the outcomes chatGPT model is it's heard me talk so many times, I can ask it to write things in my voice. Yeah. And it does a pretty good job frankly, I would still edit it. I wouldn't just post it, straight across. But I'm like, hey, it sounds like me. It's kind of cool. But one of those things that those tools are like adding a comment. I think the comments can be really blustery or superfluous or flowery. And that's not your voice. Right? When you write in. Again, I admire this about you, you ask an engaging question by being direct, and going straight to the point of like, okay, so you said you fail, how did you fail? I forgot exactly what question you asked me. It was something like that of what to do or not to do. I can't remember. But anyway, I think that's probably one of the reasons you are successful in building communities, because you have figured out how to engage people. When you have a community running like Pro Advisor Suite, what's the tipping point when the community starts to take over performing the engagement, like posting naturally without you?
Joe Moss 19:07
That's a really good question. Yeah. So when you start a community, I mean, I'll look back through and it's like, if I'm the only one posting, then that's an issue. But if you look at like RIA operators, which is much more, it's been around a lot longer, you'll see like, I'm posting every seven posts or something. So yeah, it is, I think you have to get people comfortable to post and they have to know, I guess every community has like its rules of engagement or something. And they have to know what the rules of engagement are. And I think that you can teach people what they are by like asking them to do things. Every time I start a community I usually have like a Start Here post that has some instructions on like, introduce yourself and then go check out this or something. And you can pin those to the top bucket another community I have like a map. So you look at the map and then you Put in your location, and then all added to the map. And so everyone can see where everyone else lives, basically. But just activities like that, where you ask them to do a specific action, and then they get used to like, doing things.
Richard Walker 20:11
Yeah. Have you had any bad actors you had to kick out? I don't actually think I have yet. Oh, good for you. That's great. Bringing high-quality people to it. Going back to the business model, I have admired this business model for quite some time, never figured out how to do I'm gonna have a software company. So I haven't really said I'm going to set my focus on building a community per se, but one community comes to mind that is outside the realm here is Lease Hackr you ever heard of Lease Hackr, not. So the E and hacker is taken off. So it's leasehackr.com. It's an online forum for how to hack a car lease. And it's fascinating. I see that as a really successful on the guy started by having a post like once every month or two, just kind of a blog article, and then building a forum, and then growing from there. So now he's got a paid version that you can be part of, that gives you more depth, more in-depth, knowledge, etc. But I think this speaks to the model you're after, which is you build up a community of people with similar interest, you draw them together, and then you see where it kind of flows and where it turns into something. So going back to then, I met you through RIA operators. And around the time we met is when you were putting Pro Advisor Suite together getting ready to launch it. What gave you the idea for Pro Advisor Sweet?
Joe Moss 20:21
Yeah, so just one comment on your Lease Hackrs, I guess. For a long time people were talking about niches or I'll call them niches because Ryan's Richard and like Michael and Alan Moore have been huge proponents of the niche for advisors, and now they've got the survey with, if you have a niche, you know, you won't do quite as well, year one in year two, but then year three, and year four, you're like, go way past the people that don't have a niche. So I think niche in general, across most every industry is now pretty adopted concept. And I think that there's going to be sub-niches and then like sub, sub-niches. And so I think like financial planners in the future will be creating an entire business around like a sub, sub-niche. And if that makes sense.
Richard Walker 22:26
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Joe Moss 22:28
So Pro Advisor Suite, I actually didn't have the idea. I'm gonna be honest. Someone came to me so saw with the results and optimize, he actually came to me with the idea he has two advisor tech companies. And we were just chatting on LinkedIn message. And he was like, What do you think about this idea? And so like, we refined it a bit, and then we had a call about it. And then my position is Simplicity House was actually phasing out a little bit. So I was like, alright, I'll start working on this. So that's the origination of the idea.
Richard Walker 23:02
It made me think back to I think mid-2000s 2006, seven to my silver bullet are familiar with that.
Joe Moss 23:08
Yeah, I actually did a post about that. Yeah.
Richard Walker 23:11
Okay. How do you think it compares? I mean, it's new tech, it's better tech.
Joe Moss 23:16
I mean, honestly, it's all about integrations, like I went back and read that like, original article from, I don't remember what it was, like 2009, or something. And the whole article was all about integrations. And there was like, three or four companies that were coming together that were like the tech stack, in a way. And now like integration is still like the number one pain point for advisors for their tech stack. And so my thoughts on integration is that integration is the people like the people that run the tech, the CSAs and the ops managers are the integration between the software's and training them properly, is the best way to integrate your software's. Make sure it helps if you like, put someone's name in one software, and it automatically updates and all your other software's. But you've got to have people running the technology that know exactly how all that works?
Richard Walker 24:12
Well, I want to let you in on a secret. I mean, being a software company ourselves, cost a lot of money to build integrations. And if we can't find a way to make money by building an integration, if we can't see that it will create more loyalty or a longer subscription or something like that. It's hard to say, yeah, I'll go build that integration. So I think just in general, that's why your answer is spot on. The people fill in the gaps when the tech companies can't or won't build the level of integration they want.
Joe Moss 24:41
Yeah. And so it's funny because like, when I was going through college, I was kind of anti-college. And then now I'm on this platform called Skool, which is kind of like, I see it as the future of education, basically. I mean, I think the standard four-year, college degree will change significantly down the road. So my vision for RIA specifically is to have like an RIA University of like 100 different Skool groups, communities, all different topics within the RIA industry. And then almost like every single advisor tech company has like a user community. So that's a great idea. Yeah, so like every advisor tech company has a user community that has like, all their getting started videos. That becomes their like, Help Desk too. So instead of having like a support system, you just have a community. And then I think one step further, I'm kind of excited about this stuff. Sorry, go? Well, we want to hear it. One step further is like within an RIA, I feel like Skool is also a great platform for like, internal training. So like, even within your business, I don't know it's best for like communication, like a Slack or Teams. But just like getting someone up to speed, like you can record a bunch of training videos with transcripts. And it can almost be like a wiki to because it's incredibly easy to search.
Richard Walker 26:06
That is a good idea, actually. Because I don't know that we've found the best place to put training materials, like I've recorded videos about our industry to train people on what is the financial advisor, what's a broker-dealer? What's a clearing firm? And I think we have those, obviously, we have the recordings. And I think we've posted them in a Slack channel called training, and we send people that channel, so go read everything in that channel. But that's not really the best approach. Right. So I think that's smart. And Joe do your idea of bringing tech companies to build their user communities, I would say the challenge is to have a community in the first place, we have our users, but to get them all to talk. So like my idea of should we build our community, it's a tough one, because it's another activity we have to do. And we have to then go source the people as well as the content. So if you're allowing somebody like us to come in and build the user group within your environment, where you have the people already, that's really, really powerful. That adds a lot of value to being a member of Pro Advisor Suite, for example, smart.
Joe Moss 27:04
I'm hoping to build that out more. I mean, like, if you'll see within the Pro Advisor Suite classroom, I have a little course on each one of our participating vendors. And my initial vision was to have a significant number of resources there. But it takes time and effort from their side, and from my side to put each one of those together. So hasn't quite come to fruition. But I think that, yeah, each one can have a separate community. Or you could just have one community with like, a whole bunch of mini-courses within it. For mini, a lot of things.
Richard Walker 27:34
No, that's great, man. Glad we're talking about this. Okay. And let me switch back to that favorite topic of mine artificial intelligence. Sure. So I mean, given what you're doing, you're building community, you're posting a lot, you're engaging, you're creating content, you're bringing people together, how do you see AI impacting what you do?
Joe Moss 27:51
Yeah, so I mean, I've played with chatGPT a lot. I have the paid version. And I asked questions, and I use it to build outlines and stuff, like, it's very good at putting together an outline, because that's kind of the hard part sometimes, if you're writing a blog post, or putting together a bio or whatever, just creating a framework to start on. But something that kind of has been weaving through our conversation is LinkedIn, and marketing and engagement. And so I came across this tool called heet.ai, is heet.ai. All the best LinkedIn companies are out of Ukraine for some reason. I don't know, there's a lot of LinkedIn-type companies coming out of Ukraine. But so this company, and I don't think I'd use it myself. But basically, it goes on your behalf and comments on like, 500 to 1000 posts per day. Oh, my gosh. And so then I was like, okay, this is very interesting, because maybe I don't necessarily want to do that. And you probably get kicked off LinkedIn anyway. But the concept is very interesting. Because when someone creates a post, like what they want is they want lots of people to come comment, like, share their posts, but everyone's thinking about themselves. So everyone's saying, oh, I want to put out a post that people comment, like and share. But if nobody comments, likes and shares, then nobody gets any engagement. So when you go and comment on someone else's post, it's almost like a an exchange of sorts, because they're like, oh, you gave me some attention. So I'm going to come see what you do. And I've heard this many times now recently, but it's like commenting is almost more important than posting. So you can build your following on LinkedIn, just by being a really great commenter. You don't have to post up I was.
Richard Walker 29:38
I think you post an article about that. If I'm not wrong, and I read it. Yeah. And one of the points that guy was making is that it's hard to post 10 times a day, even 10 times a week, even 10 times a month, but you can comment 10 times a day. That's way easier. So you're right, that's so smart. Do you think that we're gonna see, I mean, you just brought up an idea that this AI can be used for, I don't know, to cheat the system in a way. I mean, Twitter had this problem with bots going and following and unfollowing people to build up followership. Right. Do you see that? Do you see AI going that way? Or is LinkedIn going to put the kibosh on that really well?
Joe Moss 30:16
Yeah. So I'm doing all this LinkedIn follower tracking. And some people, I hear these comments like, oh, he bought his followers, like, it doesn't count. It's like, I know you could do that on I forget what platform I was looking into that kind of thing. But I didn't realize people could do that on LinkedIn. And maybe they can, they could, yeah, but I do you know that LinkedIn is like, actively killing profiles that are not real or not live or active. So like, I was talking to this one fellow, and he like, lost 6000 followers in a day, and he's like, wondering what happened and like LinkedIn had gone through and like, cleaned his followers. So I think that's interesting. And I think another thing is, like, they say, like, 100 people that are engaged with your content better than 10,000 that aren't like, you have to keep in mind, like, what's actually valuable. And I think that even though I'm running this, like, weekly, follower tracking program, you got to focus on what's like, just the metrics, not necessarily important. It's the engagement in the real-life human interaction.
Richard Walker 31:24
Yeah, you see that with like the influencer community, and the micro-influencer community, people have a very small subset of followers. But those followers are very, very much tied to that person. They're highly, highly engaged. My brother is an artist, and he read a book about creating super fans. And he said, if he's a musician, and he had 1000, superfans he'd make enough to live on for the rest of his life, all he has to do is produce something every year, because 500 out of those 1000s will buy, you don't need 100,000 to make that happen. So I think there's a mind shift that people have to have, which actually speaks to something else I was thinking about, which is, I don't just accept any connection request I get on LinkedIn, my basic rule is I have to meet you, I have to talk to I have to have a real connection. Otherwise, what's the point? Do you follow that same mindset.
Joe Moss 32:13
If they're in my industry, if it's a financial advisor, I'm going to accept the connection request. But if I look at their profile, and if they have, like two followers or 15 followers, I just ignore those ones. Or if they're like, in some completely other industry, I don't typically connect with those. Yeah, because connection, every connection is a follower. So if you're trying to build your follower count, like connecting with people as a good way to grow your follower count.
Richard Walker 32:42
Yeah, I don't know if this is a good fear or not. I just had this fear that if I connect with somebody who's not really well connected to me, that they're going to then try to prospect people I know. And they'd be like, oh, Rich, and I know Rich, I'm connected to him, you should connect with me. And it's like, it's false. It's why I say no to all the SEO experts, all the offshore software development people, all the letters to your it, let us buy your lists, all that stuff. All the salespeople, they're gone. Joe, we're going to wrap this up here. But I have another question. And before I ask it, I want people to know how to connect with you because you're the connector. What's the best way to find Joe Moss?
Joe Moss 33:19
I think LinkedIn is a great place. Just type Joe Moss and I've got a spiderweb in front of my name and a graph on the back of my name, so I'm pretty easy to find. And then if you want to email me, it's just Joe@proadvisorsuite.com.
Richard Walker 33:32
Nice. Okay, so is that a technique you learn to put graphics in your name, so people find you easier?
Joe Moss 33:37
It just stands out? I mean, when someone tags you, you've got a very, your name sticks out more than a regular tag with like no icons in it or emojis. Sorry. So and then Eric Agron on, LinkedIn recently did a post. And he's like calling out all the people that had an emoji in their name, and asking them what they were going to do for next year. So like, last year, I had books and then a graph that match the color of the book. So it's like red, green, and blue books, and then a red, green and blue graph. So this year, I'm changing it to the web and the graph to current show the whole networking thing.
Richard Walker 34:13
Nice. I got to think about that, because Richard Walker is such a common name. Yeah, I don't know if people have a hard time finding me. It's just Quik! CEO or Quik Forms CEO. But regardless, man, I like talking to you. So here's my last question, Joe, who has had the biggest impact on how you approach your role in our wealth tech and fintech world?
Joe Moss 34:36
Yeah, so I think, I'm going to actually reference three people, just because I feel like there's a bit of a story so Pat Flynn is the first person I came across in like the online business space. He runs a website called Smart Passive Income. And it's kind of like at the very beginning of the internet when like, blogs were a thing and people were trying to make money by running ads on a blog and a lot of people were getting into it because they thought they can make a lot of money. And I think that, you quickly realize, like, I got to have a ton of people following my blog before I'm gonna make money on ads. But he was kind of the first person that I started reading, I was like, wow, I could actually make money online. And I also started realizing that, most people trade time for money. So that's like one hour for an hourly rate or one year for a salary. And you cannot grow your income very quickly trading time for money, it just you're very capped. But when you trade value for money, which is a product, basically, when you trade value for money, you can scale it so much faster. That's kind of the whole like, online business, you can make money, you can scale it, it's not based on your hours. And then the next one, I'd say is Sam Ovens. So he owned consulting.com, just has a ton of great YouTube content about, running a business, being a disciplined human being. And he is actually the founder of Skool. So he sold the consulting business and started Skool. And his vision for Skool is a billion users. So like, I've been a huge proponent of Skool as like the next biggest social media platform. And then lastly, I'd say Alex Hormozi I mean, he's kind of a make a ton of money have huge muscles kind of guide, but I think that his ideas are really good. And so he actually just partnered with Sam Ovens on Skool, and I think that them together are just going to be amazing for online entrepreneurs, and just help a lot of people escape the rat race in a way.
Richard Walker 36:36
Yeah. Wow, those are great references. I think people are really going to get a lot of value after hearing this, and hearing how communities work. And really your honesty about let's make money and let's help each other make money. I think that's pivotal. So like, I want to say a huge thank you to Joe Moss, co-founder of Pro Advisor Suite for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Joe's website at proadvisorsuite.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion, and we'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customers Win. Thanks for joining me today, Joe.
Joe Moss 37:16
Thanks for having me. It's been awesome.
Outro 37:19
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