Establish Thought Leadership

Episode 927: Establish Thought Leadership, with John Dameron

Establish thought leadership and start making a positive impact. Listen to John Dameron’s advice on how you can establish thought leadership.

Upon graduating from college, John Dameron started a career with Marriott International. After almost seven years as a hotel manager, John was seeking more autonomy over his future and decided to change his course to establish thought leadership. He entered the financial services industry in 1997 and quickly found his niche in helping physicians with their personal finances. As he continued to gain experience in the medical community, John co-founded Spaugh Dameron Tenny in 2002. Today, Spaugh Dameron Tenny educates and advises physicians and dentists in more than 26 states.

What you will learn from this episode about establish thought leadership:

• Why a family tradition of working in the financial sector inspired John to go into financial planning himself, and how he and his partners founded their business
• Why financial issues are the number two cause of physician burnout, and how John and his team recognized they could assist with that issue once they establish thought leadership
• Why intentionality and team-driven content creation has been the secret sauce powering the growth of the business
• What strong client feedback John and his team are receiving with regards to their thought leadership channels
• Now niching down and focusing on just doctors and dentists was a difficult leap that proved to be one of the best moves the practice made
• Why focusing on a specific niche helped the firm streamline their efforts and helped keep them from spreading themselves too thin
• How John’s team taps into their deep well of experience to utilize in their thought leadership efforts
• Why learning to delegate is a difficult challenge that business owners must master if they want their businesses to grow and establish thought leadership
• Why, when you’re stuck on a project or idea, you shouldn’t be asking “how” to do it but should instead be asking “who” has the answers

Resources:

• Website: www.sdtplanning.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/johndameron1/
• Check out this insight podcast on how you can establish thought leadership

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Establish thought leadership and its impact by reading this blog

 

 

Establish Thought Leadership: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI, you know, I’ve been talking about this for weeks and weeks. In fact, I think it’s, you know, kind of months now because we’ve been making so many frequent updates to our free resources section on PredictiveROI.com.

 

We’re consistently adding either webinars or free courses, or new ebooks or guides or handbooks or checklists, because we want to try and be as helpful as we possibly can so that you can take that content and that information to be able to use it to build and scale your own business. These are insights and success strategies we have compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests.

 

So just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and whatever your request we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: John Dameron’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s guest, John Dameron. Let me share some additional context. Why, when John said yes and we are prepping for this interview, why I was over the moon, literally over the moon, excited Onward Nation that he said yes.

 

So from a rural perspective, business owner perspective, John was a partner at the firm entitled Spaugh Dameron Tenny, and his firm is one of the nation’s oldest firms dedicated to educating and advising physicians. Now, that’s a story in and of itself, Onward Nation. The niching down piece, and we’ll get to that in a few minutes, because it is compelling.

 

And they’ve been doing that now for decades. Some of the other reasons why I was super, super excited that John said yes is because he and his team have so much thought leadership, so much institutional knowledge within the walls of their firm. And now they’re getting very intentional about a strategy around financial wellness and how to create content around that strategy, whether that’s blogging or articles or workshops or a video series and how that’s gaining traction with their audience.

 

But first, it started with research. How can they be even more helpful to the physicians, to the medical professionals that they’re looking to serve? They did research. They figured out that there was a gap. How could they smartly stand in that gap in order to provide impact, in order to be helpful to their audience? They figured it out, and now they’re creating content around that, and it is leading to great momentum that is helping them build and scale the firm.

 

But then also, most importantly, it’s helpful to their audience and helpful to their clients, and they’re doing that across the firm. There isn’t just one person who is, you know, the quote unquote spokesperson for the firm. Even, you know, junior people and advisors who are building their side of the business. They’re a part of that content creation, which is excellent for the long term build and scale of the firm.

 

And it’s also extremely helpful to clients. So this thought leadership piece that John and I talked about is one of the reasons why I was so excited that he said yes, because I think they’re making so many smart decisions. There’s going to be an excellent guide as you’re looking to build and scale throughout the rest of 2019.

 

So with that said, welcome to Onward Nation, John. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: John’s Path and Journey

 

Good morning Onward Nation. Glad to be spending some time with you here this morning. Well, I’m glad to have you here, sir. So thank you very, very much for saying yes and looking forward to all the lessons, and insights and wisdom that you’re going to share with Onward Nation business owners.

 

Before we get to that, though. You guys are doing some very impressive things, obviously at the firm, as I was just highlighting, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But before we do, take us behind the curtain, John, tell us more about you. Tell us more about your past and your journey. And then we’ll dive in.

 

Okay. Well, actually, I started with graduating from college as a hotel, motel and restaurant manager, and worked in that industry for seven years. And I actually have my grandfather and an uncle that have been in the financial services industry for their entire life. So I saw that and I saw what impact they were having on their clients, what freedoms they had as far as their own schedules.

 

And that attracted me to the industry. And, 23 years ago, I made that switch and decided that I wanted to go into financial services and build my own financial services company. And then about 2002, so about six years after being in the business, I met Herbert Spaugh, who is our senior partner, and he and I decided to join practices and to grow something bigger than just our individual practices.

 

And then about three years after that, we actually, brought on another partner, Shane Tenny, to continue to build the practice. And have continued to build the practice, since then, we now have about five advisors and, seven staff and we, service physicians and dentists, and we do comprehensive financial planning for them. Wow. Okay.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Developing and Crafting A Strategy

 

So that’s exciting. And we’re going to get to the missing piece. And why focusing on that niche here in just a minute Onward Nation. But before we do that I want to go deeper into some of the things I was just alluding to, or maybe some of the things I was just highlighting, if you will, on the thought leadership side.

 

So, in the last several months, at least, you know me looking from the outside in and I’m not doing it justice when I see last several months, because I know that you and your team have been working on this developing strategy, crafting it, wanting to get it right for a period of time. So take us into the research piece.

 

When you were looking at the market where it could be helpful, how you were gathering data, and then you saw this financial stress piece and like, I think that we can be helpful here. 

 

So, take us into that piece, that uncovering because it seemed like if I was tracking with you, you really, you and your team really went about that with some intentionality of where you could add the most value.

 

Yeah. And was I on the same page with you when we were in the green room? Yeah. No, absolutely. So it’s been, I guess, about a year and a half to two years ago, we started seeing articles written about physician burnout, about how physicians are burning out in their careers. And the number one physician reason for physician burnout has to do with their jobs.

 

Just all the pressures of seeing patients and electronic medical records and the change that the industry has been through. But then number two on the list was finances. And that struck us as, you know, these surveys were done that finances were, you know, at almost at the top second to their job.

 

And we knew intuitively what we do for our clients and how we help them from a financial standpoint, get organized, feel good about their finances. Well, we say we want you to control your money, not your money to control you. So about a year ago, we started to intentionally reach out and help people beyond just our clientele, feel better about their finances, get more organized about their finances, or learn something different that they don’t know about their finances.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Trying To Make an Impact with Your Content

 

So we have, really over the last six months started, to create videos that we can post not only on our website, but also we can send out, we’ve been, you know, blogging, doing social media and really, the whole piece is to be, you know, be a thought leader as it relates to finances and physicians and dentists and, you know, effect or impact more than just our clients, you know, other clients around, around the country.

 

And that’s where it started and where, you know, six months into it. And I think we’ve got a good head of steam. And I’m looking forward to, you know, what the rest of the year looks like as far as we build that content and push it out. Well, so kudos to you for one, a couple things.

 

Recognizing the opportunity for digging in to see, okay. How can we be helpful? You uncover an opportunity, then you make the decision that you’re going to do it. And Onward Nation, I think that in and of itself is a lesson for all of us. And here’s why I say that John and his team, his firm, is working in a highly regulated and a compliance driven industry.

 

So if they can carve out the time and then go through the process of getting things approved or reviewed by compliance and making sure that they’re not overstating sound or promissory and so forth, if they can do that, then what’s the excuse for all of us? Right? I mean, John, it takes you and your team that much more time to create content because you have to go through that process, right?

 

That’s absolutely correct. Yeah. Everything that we send out, every discussion we have has to go through compliance before it can be sent out. So, a lot of times in order to do that, you know, we need to come up with 2 or 3 different iterations depending on what, you know, depending on what they come back with. And say, you can say this, you can’t say this.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Taking Your Expertise For Granted

 

So yeah, absolutely. It takes a few extra steps to do. But again, I think it’s worth it, to again have that impact and get that story out. I think this is where you can also provide some mentorship here for Onward Nation business owners. Because what I’m curious about is, did you and your partners either early on in the process, while you’re working through the process, maybe even now?

 

Did you or anybody at the firm, did you ever see yourselves like taking your expertise for granted, like should we like do we really, you know, as we’re going down this path, did anybody ever question the expertise? Yeah. I think early on we I don’t know if we questioned it as much as we just took it for granted, I would say is, if I mean, we knew we had the expertise.

 

It’s just we, I think we took it for granted and took for granted that people wanted this information. And, we’re seeking this information out. I think that’s what we’ve learned is that people really are seeking this information out. And we just kept it to ourselves for so long. 

 

And now it’s really cool to be able to get it out there and take our thoughts, our ideas, our recommendations and, you know, have a wider impact in our, in the clients that we serve and those that we don’t serve.

 

I know it’s early on in the process but, here again, I think, you know, just initial traction, initial momentum, I think is, you know, always helpful for business owners trying to to look at maybe somebody else and in a similar canoe, it gives them it gives us confidence maybe to go down that same path. What are maybe some of the highlights, maybe some of the feedback, maybe some of the thank you’s from clients and sharing an educational message.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Getting Feedback from Clients

 

What are some of the pieces of feedback that you’re receiving? Granted, I realize that, you know, you’re months into this and not, you know, five years into this, but what’s some of the feedback that you’re getting? You know, the feedback is some of our clients that are reading our blogs, seeing our videos are actually stepping forward.

 

And this is a project we’re working on now to say, hey, how can you share my story? Can you share what you all have done for me or can I share what you’ve done for me? We held a dinner, and we had a panelist and one of the panelists was our client, and he was just sharing his story and how we’ve come beside him and helped him out.

 

And, you know, I was on the panel and sitting there listening to him and having him articulate the impact that we’ve had on his finances and his family was really, really, overwhelming and exciting because it just, again, brings that to light, the impact that we can have. So yeah. And that’s awesome. That’s just awesome.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Painful Memories

 

So this is going to feel a little bit weird. Because now I want to go 180 degrees in the complete opposite direction, because you really started us off with some great mentorship, some good guidance, really taking us behind the curtain and telling us, you know, giving us some real visibility as to why you did what you did, the strategy behind it, how you’re executing on that awesome, really powerful stuff.

 

So now flipping it and going 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Tell us about that challenging time for the firm or that situation that could have devastated, maybe even ruined the practice. But it didn’t because you, your partners, made the tough decisions. So now you can look back at that and say, painful memories. But wow was critical to get us to where we are today.

 

Yeah, that’s when we, as a firm, made the decision to narrow our client focus to just doctors and dentists. And that felt like a huge jump from basically having, if you may, an endless amount of clients. Because if you’re focused on everyone, it’s kind of like everybody could be your client. Now, we were going to narrow that down and focus on just doctors and dentists, and obviously there was a limited amount of them.

 

So that was scary early on. But as time went on, it actually became much easier because we acquired deeper knowledge of our clients financial challenges and then a greater understanding of their financial complexity. So, the coach once said that the hard way becomes the easy way. The easy way becomes the hard way. But this is a prime example of something that was very, very difficult.

 

Becoming easier, as opposed to if we would have stayed, well, then I feel it’s just having everybody as a client could be a client, you know, that eventually becomes hard because it’s hard to focus on who you’re trying to attract. So that was probably one of the biggest looking back, one of the biggest challenges that, you know, hindsight’s always 2020.

 

But now looking back, that challenge was probably one of the biggest pushes for our success in our practice. So was that like, did you and your partners come together and say, look, we need to make a decision because of some pain, some turbulence, something going on in the firm that you had to make a choice.

 

Or is this more of a strategy? Hey, guys, the longer term of the firm, we should consider this industry or excuse me, this niche. Or maybe it’s this niche or maybe it’s this niche or was there some pain that was driving it? It was more, it was both. It was from a strategic, strategic standpoint. What are we going to do and what does our practice look like?

 

Okay. But then from a pain standpoint, it was difficult, you know, the different types of clients you were getting in had different issues and different challenges. And it became very hard to juggle. The more clients you receive, it becomes very hard to juggle being an expert in every field. So that was the pain. The strategic part of it was, you know, as we’re going to grow this, our practice, how can we grow it with a more succinct message to who we’re trying to attract.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Narrowing The Focus

 

So talk us through, you know, oftentimes when I’m having conversations like this with business owners, what I hear is, oh, you know, I would love to be able to niche down Stephen but, you know, I don’t want to take away my opportunity from this industry or that industry or what happens if this person comes along and and really that requires a lot of discipline.

 

Right. And to be able to say thank you, but no. So talk us through the discipline probably early on that you and your partners really had or maybe even hold each other accountable to say thank you, but know when opportunities come your way. So talk us through the discipline that you had to use early on in the process.

 

It was changing a mindset really, and understanding old habits are hard to break. So it was us having conversations of, you know, who are the clients that we’re looking for and defining who they are and defining how we’re going to, you know, how are we going to attract those clients. So I think that the big lesson was when we narrowed it down to physicians and dentists, your mind automatically starts to go into scarcity mode.

 

And the mindset that we had to have was an abundance mode. Even though we narrowed the focus, there were still an abundance of physicians and dentists that could be, you know, that we could get as clients. So it was reprogramming ourselves to not, you know, not look at it as a scarcity and also then focus on all of our material from our website to, you know, any pieces that we gave clients.

 

They all had to be physicians and dentists focused so we could tell the story and attract the right clients. And, those clients that weren’t, you know, that weren’t in the physician or dentist space, typically they didn’t reach out to us. So it helped us in who we wanted to attract.

 

But it was the mentality of abundance. And we still have that abundance mentality, even though we typically only take on physicians and dentists, give us some guidance here on timeline. Now, recognizing that every firm that might decide to make a decision is strategic is what you and your partners made the timeline. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Making Those Decisions

 

It could be different, but from your perspective, you know, from the time that you decided to make that decision to the time that the, you know, really starting to gain some traction, and maybe a little bit past kind of the rapids of that decision, like, or was it a few months, was it 18 months, a couple of years. What was that timeline like? It was it was probably, I would say, a year to where we felt like, between all of our collateral and all of our processes that we felt like, okay, we are, you know, we’re position focused because we didn’t want to take the clients that weren’t positions and dentists that we already had and said, hey, guess what?

 

We’re, you know, we’re changing over and we no longer, you know, want you as clients. We kept them as clients as well. But I would say from a new client perspective, it was probably a year to a year and a half to where if you looked at the amount of, you know, out of 100 clients that we would get 90 to 95% of those clients in a given year were physicians or dentist, they probably took a year to year and a half to get their, you know, whatever you focus on, that’s what you’re going to get.

 

And I think we did a good job on just holding each other accountable and focusing on physicians and dentists. Really smart. So let’s go back to the thought leadership piece. Because no question, you and your partners, everybody within the firm, there’s definitely a depth of thought leadership. There is a deep, deep well of expertise there. So let’s think about this process, the strategy that you and your team are executing on right now.

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Hiring The Right People For Your Team

 

Let’s think about that from a skills perspective. So your advice to business owners, what do you think is the most critical skill that a business owner needs to master in order to mimic a strategy like what you and your team are executing right now? I would say delegate and get out of the way of your team. Oh, okay.

 

You know, early on, and as a business owner, early on, you do everything, you are the business. And at some point you have to change that mentality, and have a mindset that you don’t have all the answers. You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to hire the right people that can get to the right answers.

 

You know, your business is only going to be able to grow as much as your abilities and time. And at times, you know, we need to change the way we approach the business and acknowledge that we don’t have those answers. We don’t have those ideas, and we rely on the team to help make decisions, help implement the processes, and take any ideas that they have or we have to the next level.

 

Delegation is such a great litmus test isn’t it? If it makes you uncomfortable, there’s probably something either that you need to address within yourself or a process improvement or a system improvement. Maybe we need to check our own ego at the door right? It is, and I struggle with it daily. I’m constantly asking myself, what do I need to delegate?

 

And it’s difficult because you know, the thought processes, well, I built this business. No one can do it as well as I can. And I think it is and it is an ego. To an extent. But it’s also a lot of business owners. We want to control things. And I think delegation is something that you can learn.

 

And, you know, it’s definitely difficult. It has been very difficult for me. Well, in some of us, we have our identities so wrapped up in the business in the thing. And then if we’re not doing the thing anymore, then it’s like, well, am I really that needed? I mean, it can get all wrapped up into that stuff when the business owners who successfully build and scale, they do exactly what you said a few minutes ago, they hire super smart people.

 

They get out of the way, they delegate to realize it’s not about them, it’s about the business and being helpful. Right, right. No, absolutely. Yeah. I want to hire people that are smarter than me. Yeah, absolutely. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Most Influential Lesson From a Mentor

 

So okay, so here’s another opportunity for you to share some, some mentorship, but maybe with a little bit of a twist.

 

So, tell us about what you would consider, John, to be your most influential lesson that you ever learned from one of your mentors. And then how did that lesson help you become or help you become the business owner, the thought leader, the expert you are today? I think that looking back at all the mentors mentors I had, the biggest lesson that I learned was from my mom.

 

I started working at a very, very young age. And I remember early on my mom told me, she said, you know, you’re going to work for and with many people in your life, and I want you to pay attention to how people make you feel. And I thought that was an interesting statement to say. She said that, you know, whatever they do or whatever they say that made you either like them or dislike them, like your interaction or not like your interaction with them.

 

Her advice was when someone made you feel that way and you liked that, that interaction, adopt that. And if somebody makes you feel that you did not like the interaction, but you know something they did or say, make sure you don’t do that to other people. And she said, along the way, you’re going to adapt to your own personal style and how you treat and work with people.

 

And I think that was not only helpful in my work life, but also in my personal life. Great mentorship from mom, but really smart advice. And she was a business owner too, and I worked for her. She owned a dollhouse gallery in Saint Louis, Missouri. Oh, wow. And I went there after school and worked with her.

 

Learn the lessons early on. That is awesome. Absolutely. I know we’ve covered a lot, and I know that our time is, you know, quickly coming to an end. But before we go and before we close out and say goodbye. John, any final advice that you’d like to share? Anything you think we might have missed. And then please tell us the best way to connect with you. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: Final Advice from John

 

Some final advice. I think that, I think understanding as a business owner, I don’t need to have all the answers. And one of the things that we learn from, from a coach that we’ve had along the way is when you’re stuck on a project or idea, don’t ask, how can I do it?

 

Ask who? Don’t get it. Because sometimes we have to. As business owners, we want to figure out everything. And if you have the right people on your team, it’s not, how do I do it? It’s who can I assign that to that can get it done? I think for us, as we continue to grow, that’s been over the last year and a half we’ve used that not asking how, but who and it really is, is for us.

 

It’s been a big relief because we don’t have to have all the answers. And when we ask who, it’s amazing. The path that our team has taken us on and continues to take us on, and the ownership that they have in building our team, because they feel involved. And if you hire the right people, they will have the answers that we as business owners don’t have to have all the answers.

 

Absolutely. So sometimes we make it way too complicated, don’t we? Absolutely. I know I have. Amen to that. Yeah. 

 

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Establish Thought Leadership: How to Connect with John

 

What is the best way for Onward Nation business owners to reach out and connect with you? John? They can go to our website, sdtplanning.com or Starcom and reach out through the website.

 

Okay. Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to John’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take these lessons so generously shared with you, take them, apply them into your business right away and accelerate your results and be better for it.

 

And John, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful again that you said yes, to come on to the show, to be our mentor, to be our guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you and I enjoyed it. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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