Building a personal brand in the dreaded world of wealth management in Shanghai.

Jim James: 0:15

Today, I was delighted to be joined by an old friend, Howard Whiteson, who's all the way in Shanghai. Howard is a Senior Wealth Manager of the DeVere group and also the founder of the Wealth Without Borders initiative. I've known Howard for many, many years while I was living in Beijing, and he's someone who knows how to build a brand, not just for the company, but for himself. Howard is a senior wealth manager in the dreaded realm of finance or services. When you say two words together guaranteed to make people run in the other direction, he says it's"financial" and "services." Generally speaking, Howard says they don't really get great PR. Many people are skeptical of their industry as a whole and think it's greed-ridden and full of immoral advisors, etc. He finds that to be a great pity, because like most industries, the majority of people who work within it are honest, upright folk. His aim in building Wealth Without Borders and working with the DeVere group is to build a globally recognized brand known for its life-transforming value that it brings to people, its integrity, and also to some degree a bit of humour. He has a background in professional acting, and he believes that while he wants to talk to you about retirement, he wants to do so without putting you to sleep. Basically, honesty, integrity, and a little bit of fun are key ingredients for him. I asked Howard how he goes about representing and building DeVere, a British brand in China, as well as for himself and his new initiative. He explained that he had been doing a lot of investigating since 2019 into ways to fairly represent the brand. On one level, he's a big believer in partnerships. If we can all fly flags for one another and we belong to members of valued communities, we all strengthen each other as a result. He also doesn't believe in sitting in an ivory tower and honing the perfect marketing message, but rather going out to his existing clients, to people he trusts, who are intelligent, capable expats in his case, and asking them about the challenges they face, the problems, the opportunities, their goals, and then trying, as the phrase goes, to meet them where they are, rather than coming up with glorious messaging that meets stony indifference. He has actually done a fair amount of that. Being humble and listening to your clients in an open fashion is the best place to begin, according to Howard, as well as working with trusted partners. Those two together have been extremely helpful for him. Howard identified the outset or cynicism that financial planners and wealth managers have met with. My next question for him was how he got over that first hurdle or that original divide. For him, one of the best ways to approach people is sideways on. He does this through the many different assets he has built, one of which is his own podcast. He's also writing a book based on his experience of expats. And so, he approaches people on the basis perhaps of interviewing them as a potential guest for his podcast or potentially to supply or help with material for the book. He's also doing lots of educational work where he's simply providing value with no expectation of reward-giving, as many people recognize it as the most powerful form of of receiving. We're deeply programmed to be reciprocal in our nature. Howards says those have worked very well for him. One example is through LinkedIn. Rather than saying, "I'm a wealth manager, and I can save you money, etc.," where he would be met with silence, he will often approach them and say, "I noticed you're in the automotive industry. There's a great deal of controversy and excitement about Tesla. Where do you stand with regards to electric vehicles as a manufacturer in China?" From there, he would go into a conversation that is really about them and not have an expectation of making a sale, but building a relationship. He says he only works with people he really likes and who really like him, because life is too short for conflict, and there's enough conflict in the world. He says building trust and a good relationship with someone is not necessarily going to result in business, but if he has a strong network of people with whom they all get on, business comes as a result of that, and so he tries to reflect that in his approach. Having said that, at certain times, he can be much more direct if he really feels that there is enough trust. But in the initial stages, the sideways approach works very well too. I then asked Howard how he leverages the DeVere brand. He says it is a global group, and it has a tremendous amount of power that he doesn't possess as an individual. One of the responses to 2020 has been a plethora of webinars and seminars delivered by the CEO on an increase in their own marketing materials, which he posts on his LinkedIn. He comments, likes, and shares them too. They use WeChat, which is a combination of Whatsapp, Facebook, ApplePay, and everything else. He'll post little excerpts about both DeVere and his own branch within the bigger tree. One of the challenges he found is there's a danger that people will get confused about who he's actually representing, which is why it's important that he keeps the flag of independence flying. DeVere is an independent advisor. He is an independent manager within that organization, so it does become congruent. Like all of us in life, we all want a measure of independence, and he says he's very fortunate to work for a company that smiles upon that and allows his own expression. As a professional actor, he's had a look into something called lightboard presentations. They come out of academia, where professors were delivering very abstruse concepts to their students like chemical engineering diagrams. Rather than turning their back on the students and writing on a whiteboard, in between them and a camera is a pane of glass, and it's lit in such a way that when they write on the glass, it looks as though they're writing in the air. Howard saw it as a great way to bring his drama skills into the world of numbers. However, he would have had to buy a kit from America for $22,000. Well, he doesn't have $22,000 to spend. Being in China, he went on YouTube and learned how to build a lightboard without a budget. Funnily enough, the handyman who mended his babies' highchair made him his lightboard. Since then, Howard has been able to produce five or six videos, which people can check out if they want. He's now working with another chap called Hollywood Eddie. He can leave you to guess where Eddie's worked. Eddie is applying Disney production levels to his lightboard. If you start with something that feels very intrinsic to your own nature, whether you're an extrovert or an introvert, whether you're charismatic or private, as long as it feels like it's an integral part, you can pretty much YouTube whatever you want to do and add the word "free" or "low budget," and you'll probably find ways to start that at very, very low cost, as Howard did. If it works and people like it, you then go back to your customer base, improve it, polish it, and then some business comes from that. After a while, you can afford then to perhaps reinvest and raise the quality of it. When it comes to building his funnel, which includes DeVere, his membership in the British Chamber of Commerce, his Wealth Without Borders, and more, I asked Howard what tools or programs he's using. He replies saying they have a global CRM to ensure that there's no conflict between people. For his personal brand, he uses MailChimp for his subscriber list, and he's building up subscribers for his podcast. That's one way he's generating leads. He's also taking people from LinkedIn into MailChimp using what's called a squeeze page, or an opt-in or landing page. He will offer them something of value. For instance, he'll put together a quiz asking them how they measure up against other executive expats when it comes to creating and protecting their wealth. He'll incentivize that by offering a free copy of his book or some free consulting for those who will take part. He will usually ask the questions first, and then if they want to receive the results, they'll have to put in their email to get that. He found that more effective than asking for an email at the beginning, because people are protective of emails. They don't want to get spammed. Once they've seen that the questions are actually quite useful and interesting, they're more likely to give their email. Regarding the British Chamber of Commerce, he says they're very fortunate in China that normal life is being resumed. What he does is the old-fashioned, going out, pressing flesh, talking to people, and meeting them. Nothing quite beats that in the digital world, he's discovered. They will exchange business cards, and he will tell them about his podcasts or something else that's going on. If they'd like to be notified of that, they then go on to that subscriber list, and then he will make offers into that subscriber list. In his podcast, it's often the case that both his guests and himself are looking at ways to grow their businesses. So, they will effectively go through their lists, and Howard would say, "If you want a master of PR and you want someone who can help you to master it for yourself, then there's no one better than Jim James. Here's his link." Those people then who opt in to your page become part of your list and vice versa. He's very cognizant of the fact that being in a group makes exponential leverage possible in a way that he couldn't do in the British Chamber of Commerce on a one-to-one basis. Howard likes to focus on what he does best. What he can't do very well, he delegates. DeVere offers support administratively globally from Europe, and that takes care of a lot of the paperwork. In his office in downtown Shanghai, Howard's got two people in his team who also help him with ordering lighting from cheap websites in China and making sure they actually work. He's also got two assistants in Hong Kong who help him reach out through the Facebook campaigns they run. He also hires freelancers through two websites, Fiver and Upwork. He has various criteria for making sure those people are good and enthusiastic. He will effectively interview them and give them a test, and make sure they get along. He's got someone who's actively searching for podcast guests for him. He has a marketing manager who's based in the Philippines. He has a podcast manager as well, and he pays them all reasonable r tes. He says it's important to eward them, so he gives them onuses when they achieve esults, and he takes very good are of them, because for him, etting good people to work with s very precious. Lastly, I asked Howard to share a bit more about Wealth Without Borders. As he was circling back to the beginning, he went to his clients with four or five different marketing statements. With Wealth Without Borders, they felt really represented by what he did for them. Expats ar faced with the challenges o growing their wealth an protecting it. But also, many o them will have lived i different countries. They may b concerned about complianc issues of moving their mone around, so Wealth Withou Borders was initially used t describe what he does. And then he realized that wealth is no simply about what he does, but wealth is much more br His podcast is called Wealth Without Borders, where he nterviews people who offer a w alth of advice of whatever ype, partially or wholly, t the expat community. His book s also unsurprisingly entitled ealth Without Borders. He's trad marked it in both the UK and Ch na, and he says it just becomes the brand, because it represent the heart of what he does. He' very interested in helping peop e gain wealth by aligning the r inner selves with their financ al goals. He believes tha while it's not unique, it's v ry rare. Most of the people in his space, he finds, are ve y much focused on the pr duct, whereas he's focused on th meaning. And so, Wealth Withou Borders is a meaningfu statement that operates on number of levels for a number o people I really enjoyed speaking with Howard today. I learned a great deal about the work he does. Hopefully, he's enlightened you on financial services, and it no longer seems as boring or dreary as you once thought. If you yourself are an expat, I hope what he has shared can be of use to you. If you are interested in learning more about Howard and Wealth Without Borders, you can go to his website.