We took a struggling business in a boring industry from ZERO to $20k/month and growing, onboarding 20 clients a month without any of the usual hoopla, with this secret sauce.
A boutique wealth management firm started by 2 ex-Merrill Lynch advisors, Moderna Capital wanted to help “young professionals” with financial advice.
BUT AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF ON THEIR OWN, THEY JUST COULDN’T GET CLIENTS.
They were doing exactly what they had learned at Merrill Lynch and it just wasn’t working.
When we looked at their brand it became painfully obvious. They had left the big corporate firm to be a small boutique agency for young people, and yet everything about the way they looked, spoke, and operated was a carbon copy of the Merrill Lynch model. And that just wasn’t going to fly for the young professional demographic.
We needed to show them off as being something different, special, cool as compared to the stodgy Merrill Lynch brand.
THEY NEEDED TO EMBRACE WHAT WAS SO DIFFERENT ABOUT THEM IN ORDER TO ATTRACT A YOUNGER AUDIENCE.
The name had to go. Moderna Capital? Their new name is Stash Wealth and they help HENRYs (High Earners Not Rich Yet) with financial education.
Their new marketing consisted of happy hours with craft beer and not-your-father’s financial advisor presentation about how to live the life you want with the budget you have.
Their newsletter is called “Financial Cliffnotes” because nobody under the age of 40 (or any age really) wants to read a long boring article about the value of an IRA (yuck.)
And they started really owning their voice. Within a year they became known on a national level, seen as the voice of this generation on finance. They’ve had guest columns and have been featured in dozens of publications, and invited to speak as experts and MBA programs such as Harvard, Cornell and Yale (neither of them have an MBA.) They’ve been contacted by McKinsey for advice on how to appeal to the millennial generation.
AND IT’S PAID THEM BACK IN SPADES.
They started making $20k/month in product sales off their site and onboarding about 20 clients per month into their asset management platform. At this rate they will be a multimillion dollar company in the next 2 years.
HOW DID WE DO IT?
Stay tuned because in my next article I’m going to tell you exactly how we find their secret sauce.