Financial Advisors Biggest Obstacle & Opportunity to Grow AUM with Mike Saunders

In this episode, we sit down with Mike Saunders to unpack the single biggest factor limiting financial advisors from scaling assets under management — and why it’s also their greatest growth opportunity. While many advisors focus on performance, products, or market conditions, the real constraint often lies in positioning and visibility. Without clear authority and differentiation, even highly skilled advisors risk blending into a crowded marketplace and competing on fees instead of value.

Mike shares how shifting from technician to trusted authority can transform the way prospects engage, trust, and ultimately consolidate assets. We explore practical strategies for building credibility, amplifying thought leadership, and creating consistent inbound demand — all designed to help advisors attract higher-quality clients and grow AUM more predictably. If you’re looking to move beyond referrals and market-driven growth, this conversation will challenge how you think about your brand and your long-term expansion strategy.

Episode Highlights Here:

Brett

Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Hello everybody. Brett Swarts,here, I’m excited about one of our new strategic alliances for any, especially anyone who’s inthe financial advising world, particularly and are looking to level up their ability to position andmarket and be the authority for their clients. Let’s face it, if you’re even working with ultra high net worth individuals and or especially using advanced strategies like like the deferred salestrust to help people exit, you’re going to want to also position yourself as an expert ineverything you’re doing. And so we want to encourage you to level up as a financial advisor by connecting with and working with people like Mike Saunders. He is a president, CEO of authority marketing strategist and founder of authorize Academy and authority hub. And here ally is focused on the financial ad world. He’s going to share with you some secrets today and some wisdom. But he’s been featured on Forbes, Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC. And with that being said, I’ll pass over to Mike. Mike, how you doing?

Mike Saunders

Brett, thank you. Good morning. Thanks for having me. And I think this is such a powerful opportunity, because I say this anyway, because 99.2% of my work is with advisors. And as we know, your competitors are one click away, and you need to stand out and all of that, but even more so with your audience, where you’re talking about a strategy that is not commonplace, it’s a little unique, and it’s got some explanation that is needed, and more importantly, it’s got trust and credibility that you need to have baked in. And it’s kind of like, this is, you know, if you hear about something new and it’s like, oh, where’d you hear that from? That sounds a little, you know, half baked. Where’d you hear that from? Oh, online. Oh, really. So, I think that when people are mentioning, you know, oh, hey, I heard about this strategy to reduce or eliminate or all of these things, I think that in people’s mind, they’re like, I don’t know, but if they hear about it from reputable sources, credible platforms. If you the advisor, are interviewed on a fox or an ABC News affiliate, and you’re using that in your marketing now, all of a sudden, you’re piercing through that doubt, and the trust and credibility is there. So that’s the whole premise of what of my work. And so I’ve just prepared a brief presentation here that I will get started, and then we’ll show you how this, how this actually works. So, I’ve got a federal on the phrase authority positioning portfolio, and it’s kind of like a financial portfolio of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IUL, annuity, whatever the financial product is, but an authority positioning portfolio is all of the assets that position you. As an expert, I love to be able to say that this authority positioning portfolio optimizes your current marketing. Meaning, I don’t have to say, buy my thing. Stop doing other people’s things. You know, I don’t need to say, mine’s better than the other people. I say, keep doing whatever marketing you’re doing whatever Facebook, AD, email marketing, event, virtual webinar, dinner, seminar, whatever you’re doing will work better when people see you as an expert advisor, so being able to boost the effectiveness of your campaigns, really, I’m an educator at heart. I teach marketing for a few universities online, and I just love, love, love when you can see that a specific strategy has some backbone to it. And I found this a couple years ago, and I thought it was so powerful that in 1901 Andrew Carnegie, who was the steel magnet, he was looking to retire focus on philanthropy. JP Morgan, the banker, saw an opportunity, and he met with Andrew Carnegie and on a handshake, purchased Carnegie Steel for four $80 million which is $10 billion today. And do the math, you know, even if 10 billion didn’t write it, still multiple billions on a handshake. And I submit to you that this no longer would be the case, because you and I would not sell a$4,800 car on a handshake. So why would it work then and not now? Trust credibility. People these days don’t trust each other, and that’s what it’s like when we’re talking about your family fortune, your retirement, your capital gains strategies, all of these things, and that’s why that matters. So, a few questions just to kind of think about you struggle attracting these higher net worth clients, because you know that you’ve got competitors. And secondly, do they not show up to your webinars? And then thirdly, do they come in going, oh, I heard about that thing, whatever it is.

Brett

And so, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview. If. And please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.

Watch the episode here:

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