A clear path to financial freedom.
Ashley Micciche is the Co-Founder and CEO of True North Retirement Advisors.
True North Retirement Advisors believes designing a retirement plan that is built around where you are now and where you want to go is critical. They offer expertise in 401(k), cash balance plans and concentrated positions. They’re proficient in the nuances and complexities of portfolio management and asset allocation.
Learn more about how True North Retirement Advisors can help you design a retirement plan by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.
With us right now we've got Ashley Micciche. And Ashley, did I say your last name right?
0:40
You are so close. It's Micciche.
0:42
Micciche. And you are the Co-Founder and CEO of True North Retirement Advisors. You're on the web at TrueNorthRetirementAdvisors.com and you are well known, Ashley, for being the Host of The One Minute Retirement Tip podcast which has over 415 episodes as of when we're recording this. And so by the time someone listens, you'll probably be up to 500, by then, and and your secret. You do a daily podcast. I'm a big fan of daily podcast, but I think it's nice about yours is it's it's just a minute or two.
1:24
Yes, yeah, it's a lot less work, isn't it when you just took a couple minutes a day so I can keep up.
1:31
Now one thing that you also have taken advantage of is that you are on Amazon Alexa. So explain explain to me, first off, just kind of talk about what what True North Retirement Advisors does. And then let's actually talk about how you were able to develop this one minute podcast and how you're able to get it on not just Alexa as it because you know, right now someone could say Alexa play The Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast and it'll play Like through tune in or something like that. But you actually have this enabled so that people can have this show up in their daily flash briefing,
2:09
right? Yeah,
2:10
exactly. So, a lot of questions.
2:16
Yeah.
2:17
Okay, so True North is a firm that was founded in 2017. My dad and I founded it together after working together at big firms for about 12 years. So I joined my dad was a has a background as a generalist financial advisor. So back in the old days in the 80s, and 90s, he would have been, what's a dirty word now, which is a stockbroker. And our industry has evolved tremendously since that time. And so when I joined him, my I discovered pretty quickly that I love working with 401k plans. And so I started to specialize in that pretty early on within about a year. I was going After and specifically targeting 401k plans and having a lot of success with that. And so what what sort of transpired was through working with 401k plans, most of my plans are smaller, they have 50 or less employees, I would sometimes work with the finance person or an HR person, but most of the time I was working with the business owner as a primary contact for the plan. And so I started to to expand what we were doing in serving these business owners. So I would do their 401k plan, we would manage their personal assets. And then many of them were very close to retirement and wanting to exit their business and they had no clue how to go about doing that. So we've sort of come full circle now and that we specialize in working with business owners and helping them make that transition into retirement, whether they want to sell their business transfer to a family member or another employee. We help them manage that transition. Make sure that they're doing all the right things. And they're not procrastinating. because, frankly, there's just not a lot of people who do exit planning in a comprehensive way like we do. Most of our business owner clients and most what I come up against my biggest competition is just procrastination and, and entrepreneurs. I'm not really sure how to get started and putting it off because it's sort of like an important but not urgent kind of thing.
4:25
Yeah. And so actually, when did you decide that you were going to start an audio program or a podcast and and what made you decide that you're going to do a one minute format, so you could because obviously, you've been doing this now for close to a year and a half?
4:38
Yeah. So all the credit goes to Nick True from Mapped Out Money. He's the person who and you know, Nick True.
4:46
Yeah. The guy?
4:48
Yes. So he was the one I was at FINCON in 2018. And I happen to just walk into a presentation he was doing on Amazon Alexa and I realized the terminal This opportunity that exists on Alexa to talk to people about retirement, which is what I'm passionate about doing. And when I dug into the weeds, and I looked into it there was at that time and there's some other money, podcasts, personal finance, flash briefings on Alexa now, but still, there's not really I'm like the only one that's doing retirement and doing it in a consistent way. And so I think that there's a tremendous amount of opportunity for businesses of all types if they have little, like snackable bite size, short content that's made for Amazon Alexa and the flash briefings because people don't want to listen to two hours of one flash briefing, but they it's meant to be like, here are the headlines. So and I found that, you know, I wanted to do a podcast, but I didn't want to do all the work of getting guests and all and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And then when I walked in to that presentation, just by chance, it was sort of Like this, like the sky, the heavens opened and the light was like, oh, like, this is what you should do so and it's been a lot of fun I really like it I get I get a lot of feedback through reviews and people emailing me telling me that, you know, it's it's made them think about their retirement in a whole different way. In fact, a couple of I want to say maybe a month or month and a half ago, I got an email from a gal because I did a whole week's theme around reasons why you shouldn't retire. You know, a lot of people get to retirement age or close to it. And they think just because it's like, that's what you do when you're 65 you retire, but they didn't really want to retire. And so I talked about some reasons why you may want not want to retire and she's like, thank you so much for talking about that, because it completely shifted my mindset and how I view retirement and yeah, why why should I have to stop working if I don't want to, and I still enjoy what I'm doing so right?
6:53
Yeah, I mean, I can see myself I don't wanna I don't ever want to retire. Like I want to keep serving people and helping people. So absolutely. Want to talk about the like, how do you create the one minute content?
7:07
So I, I write I like writing so I kind of write out everything so that I can stay focused and not ramble. I think that's important in that format. And so I keep a Google doc and I, I just create, like, I come across articles or things. I'm like, Ooh, that would be a good topic or good theme. And then I do a whole weekly theme. So in order to I break down, like maybe a complex topic like your Roth 401k, and whether or not you should contribute to a Roth into little bite sized chunks every day. And so I take a that's what allows me to take some more complex topics and then create these smaller bits because I can break it up. And so I'll do weekly themes around a specific topic. And I never run out Out of stuff to talk about because my mind is sort of wired that way now that I'm doing this, I'm always looking at an always when I read articles or I come across something, I'm like, Ooh, that would be really good. And then I when I get to the point where I'm ready to kind of expand on it, then I write out what I'm going to talk about for the week. And then I record on my just through my laptop through a microphone, external plugin microphone I have I put all the files into Dropbox and I send them to the guy in who does my audio editing and he pretty much takes it from there. So it is, uh, it is time consuming because I want it to be really good and I don't want it to be just like any other article that someone could look like. I want to infuse my own experiences and stories and and what I've seen work with clients and not work. And so I try really hard to make it good and different at the same time. And so it does take a while I'm thinking about and trying to develop ideas and go a little bit deeper in a way that makes sense for the format.
9:08
What evidence do you have that, that, uh, that Alexa has been, by the way, I apologize for anyone who's listening to this, and we keep, we keep turning their Alexa on and off, because it would keep mentioning that word, Alexa. But how did what evidence do you have that being on the Alexa platform has been good for your business?
9:29
Yeah, I mean, just in the download. So I, pretty much if I look at a consistent track, I more more and more people are discovering it. They're listening to it. They're adding it to their flash briefing. And as a result, every single day, I'm talking to them about their retirement. And so I've had a number of people reach out to me, I'll offer like free things from time to time, like, you know, a checklist or something to kind of help them if it's related to that topic. And then when people reach out to me, inevitably, you know, they have questions, they want help with their own retirement. I'll help them with social security. Like one of the free things I offered is a free social security analysis when I did a topic on Social Security. And so people are like, Yes, I want you to do to show me like, here's what it would look like if you took it at 62 versus 66, or 70. And it helps answer a lot of questions. So I'm positioning myself as this authority on retirement, and doing it in a way that I'm not, I'm not, I'm very careful about not being aggressive about promoting my business and having it sound like a commercial. It's, here's all the content here's can help you whether you do it on your own, or you work with your own advisor, or you want to work with someone like me, I don't care. I just want you to understand this topic better so that you can make smarter decisions for your retirement. And I think that's it because it comes from the heart. And that's how I authentically feel about it. It resonates with people and I, the viewership grows. And people have reached out to me a number of times. In fact, today, I need to follow up with someone who I got connected to through, he reached out because he had been listening to me. So,
11:22
obviously, I think at the end of the day, you know, we want to look at the bottom line and see, are you getting conversions as a result of that?
11:29
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's, it's hard because I enjoy it, and I end it takes its time. It's something that takes time, like you have to be patient with it too. But it is very encouraging because it is growing. And I do have people who consistently reach out to me, it also in my business, it's not a high volume business, like I really only want about 10 to 20 new clients every year. So I don't need the conversion rates to be high. I just need You know, quality in terms of new opportunities coming in from that to make it worthwhile? Yeah.
12:07
Awesome. Well, great. Well, Ashley, again, you're the Founder, and I'm going to pronounce I'm gonna try your last name one more time. Micciche, no Micciche, Micciche, ah Sicilian. You are the Co-Founder and CEO of True North Retirement Advisors. So one thing you can do right now is you can if you're not, by the way, if you're not using the flash briefing on the like, so that's my, my favorite feature. And so one that I use the most often, but you actually have a video where you show people how they can add that using the app. And actually what you can actually if you're on True North Retirement Advisors, and you click on it to hover over resources, there's One Minute Retirement Tips podcast. Of course, there's the links to the podcast places where people can subscribe. One of those is Amazon Alexa, you just click on that and you can Do it right in your browser app, so that you can hear Ashley's One Minute Retirement Tip each day. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us.
13:09
Thank you, Josh. This is a lot of fun.
13:13
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