Would you rather transfer your values or your money to your children? That question, and the decades of real-life experience behind it, sits at the heart of our conversation with Leonard Raskin, President and CEO of Raskin Global and author of "Fiduci Who?"
Leonard has spent 40 years building a fee-based financial consulting firm that refuses to choose between scale and soul. From his childhood dream of owning an NHL hockey team to becoming a trusted advisor who sits with families in hospice, at weddings, and around their kitchen tables, Leonard shares why the best marketing strategy he ever had was simply showing up as a human at crab feasts, on the radio, through a podcast, and even as a cartoon version of himself on LinkedIn.
If you've ever felt pressure to niche down, 10X your business, or run Google ads when what you actually want is to build deep, lasting relationships with people you'd invite to dinner, Leonard's story will make you feel a whole lot better about trusting your gut.
0:00 — Today's Guest
5:13 — Hockey Dreams to CEO
8:08 — What Raskin Global Does
12:41 — Service Model and Values
14:53 — Clients Become Family
19:07 — Scaling Without 10X
23:50 — Defining Success
27:24 — Ideal Clients and Dinner Test
32:21 — Crab Feast as Marketing
36:47 — Early Career Lessons
42:24 — Referral-Driven Niche
43:08 — Marketing That Works
43:34 — Book and Podcast Flywheel
45:10 — Service Audit and Outreach
47:22 — Why Keep Showing Up
49:10 — Human Marketing Wins
50:35 — Cartoon Clips on Social
52:59 — Trust and Fit Matters
56:47 — Scaling Human Connection
58:29 — Behind the Brand Qs
1:07:05 — Defining Real Success
1:10:47 — How to Reach Leonard
1:12:14 — Scale Beyond Referrals
There's a tension every leader of a B2B service has to navigate: How do you scale without compromising the quality of your services - or the values that drive them? The CEO's Heart for Service is where accomplished B2B leaders share hard-won insights on walking that tightrope.
The CEO’s Heart for Service is a production of Brand3. If you’re a B2B service provider who delivers exceptional service but struggles to get your marketing to connect with the right people, find us at brand3.net. And sign up for our Brand3 Newsletter that only sends marketing insights worthy of your inbox - genuinely helpful stuff for the road ahead.
The CEO’s Heart for Service is also supported by Forge Podcast Company, a turnkey production solution for using podcasts to reach a wider audience, win new clients, and grow. Find them at forgepodcast.co
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The CEO's Heart for Service. We have a really fun one for you today. We are going to meet Leonard Raskin, president and CEO of Raskin Global.
Orsi, I just want to turn it to you right away. What are some things that the audience can look forward to today from this conversation, or things that surprised you along the way? You knew Leonard a little better than I did.
Orsolya: Every part of this conversation was super, super fun. My mind is just going nonstop right now with the wealth of information we've received from Leonard and how he runs his business. Fascinating. Truly a CEO with a heart for service.
I'm just so excited for our listeners to tap into some of Leonard's knowledge and learn how he has realized through experience that sticking to his values is of utmost importance to him. He defines that as his success and runs his business in every way while staying true to himself.
It's so refreshing to hear how he expressed that, and there's tons of information to take in. I'm just super excited for everyone to listen to this.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I think what people are going to find here is that if you're a service provider in a high-stakes, high-trust space like Leonard is in the financial space for business owners, there are a couple of different ways to go about it.
You can be the person who draws a line between the client relationship and the service you provide, and that's where it ends. Or you can be the person who is a trusted advisor and truly becomes a part of your clients' lives.
If that's the model that feels right for you, listen. We're learning from four decades of experience with Leonard, and he's not stopping anytime soon. He has real-life proof that there's a very good argument for focusing on personalized service and being part of your clients' lives.
Keep this question in front of you, because he's going to bring it up later: Are the people you're targeting in your marketing, reaching out to, talking to, and signing on with your business people you would want to invite over to your home for dinner?
Have you given yourself permission to make the question of whether these are people you want to have a real relationship with for many years to come a true qualifier in how you market, sell, and decide to take on a client?
Because that could be the secret recipe to your success all the way down the road. He's got more to share, but you're going to enjoy this conversation with Leonard Raskin. He's fun, so just enjoy this journey with him.
By the way, I completely forgot to introduce us. I'm Matt Wolfe, and this is Orsi Herbein. We are the partners and owners of Brand3, and we specialize in B2B marketing. You're going to hear all about that as we go over right now and meet Leonard.
Leonard, welcome to the podcast. So glad you're here today. Thanks for joining us.
Leonard Raskin: It is my pleasure to be here. I'm glad we could get this to happen.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Well, we have so much to talk about and so much ground to cover today. But what we like to start with is a very human question. We like to get to know the humans behind the brands we're talking to because, as we'll probably discuss today, we talk a lot about how Brand3 works with B2B services that offer high-trust, high-stakes services to people.
Your team and our team both exist in that space.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Which means nothing is going to move forward until a human meets a human.
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And realizes, "I not only think you know what you're doing, but I also like you. I trust you with some critical piece of my future, whether it's money, marketing, technology, whatever it might be."
So our first shot at getting to know you as a person behind everything you've built at Raskin Global is this: When you were a kid, you probably didn't consider that you would be starting a company called Raskin Global and building what you've built.
Leonard Raskin: No.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Not at all? What was on the radar for young Leonard? What was on the...
Leonard Raskin: It is a great question.
Leonard Raskin: Young Leonard wanted to be an NHL hockey player. That's what he wanted to do. I loved hockey as a kid. I loved hockey growing up.
But I was a chunky little Jewish kid, and they don't usually play in the NHL. The other thing was that I could skate, but I couldn't skate fast.
So it probably wasn't in my future to be an NHL player without being able to skate really, really fast.
But I loved sports all the way through school. I played football, not for the school, but through local organizations. In your area, the Optimist Club or something similar would sponsor kids' sports. So I played football, baseball, and tennis. I loved all different sports, but hockey was always my favorite.
If I wasn't going to play, the next best thing was to own a team. So it turned from playing the game to owning a team that played the game. That became a life goal. How could I make enough money to own a hockey team?
It could have happened, I guess, but needless to say, it didn't happen directly. I'll say that. It didn't happen directly.
These days, and even back then, you needed millions and millions or billions and billions, neither of which I had. So it was just a matter of finding some way to make money, and maybe someday I could own a hockey team. That was the goal.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Do we currently own any piece of any hockey team at this point?
Leonard Raskin: Yes. The answer is yes, so the goal is fulfilled. Here's how.
In the NHL, the New York Rangers, who I don't root for, by the way, are owned by Madison Square Garden Network, which is a publicly traded stock. So owning one share kind of says, "I own a piece of that."
I don't own any individual securities in the sense that I don't advise people on individual securities. Who knows what stock is good today and bad tomorrow? But I do own that stock, so I can say I have ownership in a professional hockey team.
Orsolya: Amazing.
Leonard Raskin: Not how I intended it, but at least it's something to satisfy the hunger.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Well, the security thing is a great segue into what you do. Can you tell us a little bit about Raskin Global and what's going on there?
Leonard Raskin: I can. Raskin Global is a fee-based financial consulting firm. What that means is that when I meet with someone, whether it's a business owner, executive, or professional, they hire me because, as you said, it's people to people, trust to trust. They like me, they trust me, and they believe I can help them with some aspect of their financial future in a way that they're not getting advice today.
I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Fiducie Who? It's about my now 40 years of doing this and believing that it is always, always, always in the best interest of me and our firm to do what's in the best interest of our clients.
It never took a regulator, a law, the Department of Labor, or anyone else telling me that's how I should act for me to act that way.
There are people in the business of financial advice who tell people what to do with their money, and in my estimation, sadly, not only do they not have the client's best interest at heart, but they don't even know what's in the client's best interest to begin with.
Lawyers recommend legal documents and trusts, and I'm not disparaging lawyers. There are great lawyers out there. Accountants give some tax advice, mostly historical reporting of tax data. Insurance people sell insurance. Investment advisors advise on investments.
Some of them call themselves fiduciaries, particularly those in the attorney class, the investment advisory group, or even fee-only financial advisors. They call themselves fiduciaries because they believe that, while they charge this way, they only have the client's interest at heart.
My problem with that is that they don't call themselves limited fiduciaries. That is, the only thing they're fiduciaries in is what they look at. But the fact that they don't look at the other 90% of someone's circumstances means they can call themselves fiduciaries while everything else is left to chance.
We don't leave anything to chance. We look at a business owner's circumstances from A to Z, from the first dollar of cash flow coming in to taxes, tax planning, business structuring, tax structuring and strategy, real estate ownership, asset ownership, company benefits, and retirement plans for the company.
Should the business owner participate in those plans or not? Why do they have one? How do you set up the structure of your company? How does your personal financial cash flow run? What do you have available in case of an emergency? How are you protecting that wealth? How do you grow that wealth? The most important part of what we do is figuring out how you enjoy that wealth. And then ultimately, how do you transfer that wealth?
We get involved in every aspect of that. The book Fiducie Who? was written based on the fact that we look at every single item of someone's financial world, and we advise on all of it.
I often have people say to me, "Well, how is it possible that you can be a fiduciary in all of those areas?"
I say, "Well, we're not. We don't do legal documents, and we don't do tax returns, but we know what needs to be there, and we sit with and advise alongside those professionals."
Everything we do takes a full, skeptical view, if you will, of what we're reading, seeing, and looking at, and how it presents itself, to make sure that the person we're advising is indeed getting the best advice they can in every area of finance.
Orsolya: Fascinating. Can I make an appointment?
Leonard Raskin: Yes, you can. Absolutely. And this is why people do.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Well, this is not obviously the kind of relationship we hear offered.
One of the first things we like to explore, because we're called The CEO's Heart for Service, is what it means to provide great service to your clients. We're already well down the road with this, right? We're talking about your definition of what it means to be a fiduciary and how you have, in many ways, redefined that for your clients.
But I wonder what else sits under that umbrella of how you know, and how you make sure your team knows, that we're taking great care of our people right now. What makes Raskin Global who we are as a team?
Leonard Raskin: Got it. Got it. Well, first thing is, I don't want to say we're heart-centric. That would be going a little too far. I know that's what yours is, but that would go a little too far for us.
We absolutely have a service-centric model. Our goal from the start, our tagline, is to empower people to choose their financial future. So we start right there, and everything we do as a firm follows a service model that says, "This is what we provide."
I have two assistants, Kelly and Susan. Kelly has been with me for 25 years, and Susan has been with me for 23 years. The good news is that we only have to remind each other, not just me reminding them, every now and then about what's most important, just to stay on top of it.
But I don't have to teach someone new who we are. What we're about is making sure our clients do, or at least have the advice to do, the things that will give them the best financial future.
Everybody lives by that, and we know that when we do that, we're rewarded financially, and our clients become really important in our lives. They end up being people we work with.
Leonard Raskin: We've given out an award. We have an annual crab feast, which is something we do as a firm once a year. We invite all of our clients to the crab feast.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Wow.
Leonard Raskin: We're inviting around 500 households that we serve, so more than 1,000 people end up getting invited. You never know how many are going to show up. It could be 300, 60, or 150. It's all sporadic. We never know, but we know it's going to be an amazing event no matter what.
Everybody who comes brings guests to meet us because it's a really non-threatening way for someone to get to know us. These people are part of our lives. They're not just, quote-unquote, "a client."
One of the things I do is go back to that definition of a fiduciary. I'll ask someone if their attorney can tell them the names of their children. These are attorneys who might have drafted wills or trusts for that client, but they don't know the names of their kids.
I had an attorney draft a trust and will for a client once. In the follow-up letter, they said their daughters could act as trustees when they reached a certain age. The problem was that one of their kids was a boy. They had a son and a daughter, but the son had a name that wasn't obviously male or female.
You're talking to these people about their future. I just asked them to send me a copy of the documents so I could review them, and they said, "Your daughters can step in as trustees." I sent back an email saying, "Except one of them is their son."
How do you help a family when you don't even know who the family is?
The other piece of this is that our work is generational. We meet with a couple, an individual, or a business owner, and the first thing we tackle is their personal circumstances because the business can't be handled if the personal side is a mess.
So we dig into their personal finances and get to know everything about them: marriages, divorces, children. We've seen children in rehab. We've sadly had clients whose children have tried to commit suicide, and we've been with them at a drug rehab center.
We've seen clients sitting with a parent who is no longer the parent they once knew because of aging and dementia. We've sat in hospice with families, reading Dad's will to make sure everybody is on the same page about what happens next when Dad passes.
We've been in divorce court. And I dare say that when businesses break up, it's not exactly divorce court, but it's just as bad, maybe worse. It's business divorce court.
We are intimately involved in these people's lives.
We had a couple we'd worked with for almost 30 years. We'd known their kids since they were seven, five, and two, in that age range. Dad was diagnosed with ALS a few years ago. The daughter was engaged, and she moved her wedding forward so Dad could attend. We were invited to the wedding.
We've been at christenings, brises, and funerals. You name the occasion, we've been there.
Our service model is such that we become ingrained in people's lives. What I know is that if we're not, then we have a customer. If we are, then we work with a family, and we much prefer to work with families than customers.
Orsolya: Wow.
Orsolya: So Leonard, tell us about your success in scaling such a highly customized, highly relational, highly customizable service. How do you get past all the talk about 10X this, 10X that, and conversations around transactional approaches that teach business owners to outsource or delegate relationships?
What's your take on that?
Leonard Raskin: It's a great question. I've never been in the business of outsourcing any of it. We outsource the things we can't and don't do, but we have great relationships with providers who step in and handle those things.
But when it comes to the primary relationship itself, it's just not something we've done.
From a scaling standpoint, it's a great question. Over the years, I've had a number of business mentors and coaches, and one thing several of them have told me is, "You should niche. You should specialize. If you niche and specialize, you'd grow so much more. Your business would be so much bigger."
And I said, "Well, then it wouldn't be my business. It would be some other business." That's not who I want to be.
Let's go back in time now, Matt, to your question about young Leonard. Just a little background: when I was eight years old, my parents got divorced. I hadn't seen my father since I was 11, and I'm now 61.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Oh my goodness.
Leonard Raskin: At 14, I went to work to help my mother pay rent and help my sisters and myself get a college education. I can only tell you that having a business of consequence and a meaningful net worth for my family was beyond a pipe dream.
Again, if I could have played hockey, I could have earned some money. Owning a team was such a far-off thing.
To give you an example, I have a 24-year-old son. Two years ago, he had the opportunity to pursue his master's degree in Dublin, Ireland. He was deciding whether to study there or somewhere in the States.
I said to him, "Matthew, when I was your age, I couldn't spell Dublin. I couldn't find Dublin on a map, and I certainly never thought in my life I would ever go to Dublin."
Regardless of the business, what I believed in long ago and still believe in today is that it's our job, our mission, and my purpose to help people.
I used to much prefer helping people get their first million than their next million. People who are earning their first million can't pay as much as those earning their next million, but we never turned them away. It's just who we were.
So the practice has grown, and I've brought in associates to help me meet with and handle the volume of people. But there is no one in the practice receiving advice who can't email or call me if something comes up, even if they work with another associate.
That's just how I've grown the business. I'm still the guy. I'm still here, not going anywhere, and I don't need to be 10X. I don't want to be 10X.
There are some things I still strive to have financially, but my soul is more important than that next piece. I have plenty.
I work with a lot of people who are continuously striving for more. One of the questions we ask them when we first start working together is, "What's enough?"
What are the things that matter most to you? What will allow you to say, "I was successful"? How will you know?
Orsolya: That's really interesting, Leonard. I'm kind of wondering why you chose service-centric over heart-centric, because it's both.
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely.
Orsolya: You really are staying true to your values as you describe your business. And we actually do advise people to niche because I think it works very well for certain companies.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Orsolya: But I think what you're describing is another piece of our advice, which is to define your own definition of success.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Orsolya: If your definition of success is 10X, that's going to be very different from your definition being going to bed knowing you've done your best work and made a difference for people, right?
You're choosing to stick to your values, and that's what defines the success you're chasing every single day.
Leonard Raskin: Yes. Absolutely correct. You're right on point. The only reason I didn't say heart-centric is that it just comes from there. It lands there. It just didn't start there. I guess that's the thing. But over time, it absolutely has.
We would not be able to serve everyone. We can't serve everyone. While we don't have a minimum asset requirement, people ask me, "What's your minimum?" because we advise on assets. They want to know if there's a minimum amount of assets below which we won't meet with someone.
The answer is no. But as a fee-based firm, we charge for the advice we give, and we do have minimum fees. If you can't afford the minimum fee, it's really hard for us to help you. That's something we've raised over time so that we can help people.
I wish I could do pro bono work all day, but it doesn't pay the bills. We've had to raise our fees to accommodate that and work productively.
But beyond that, there are two groups of people we don't charge the same amount as someone coming to us for the first time. The first is the children of the people we work with. We offer them our consulting services at no cost.
As I said earlier, one of the aspects of financial planning is how to transfer your wealth and pass it on. What we know, sadly, is that in our country, and I imagine in the world, although I don't practice internationally, people who create, inherit, and manage wealth too often pass it on to financially ignorant beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries can lose money really fast.
We want to help the people we've helped create wealth transfer that wealth and their family legacy to children who understand what they're receiving.
I ask people all the time, "Would you rather transfer your values or your money to your children?" Nobody I've met with would rather transfer their money.
Orsolya: Can I make an appointment?
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely. Absolutely. So these are the important things.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: You know, Leonard, I find that in professions like yours, there are at least two kinds of professionals. There are those who received the rule book and said, "Oh, is this how it works? Cool. Okay, I'll do it that way." And then there are people like you who have repeatedly asked the question, "Okay, that's the rule book, but what did it miss? What's next?"
I really think that's a huge part of your success here because you've unpacked at least three to five things that I don't normally hear someone in your position talk about.
I want to come back for a moment to the idea of the niche because what we teach about niching is a little different, and it probably still applies to what you do.
In our Scale Beyond Referrals program, we coach B2B service providers like you who are still founder-led, still client-facing, and have this heart for service. They're our favorite people to work with, by the way.
What we find is that the idea of a niche gets treated in a reductive manner. People think, "Oh, you only work with people in this industry or these three to five categories."
What we do is come to someone in your position and say, "Hey, you have many decades of experience, and throughout those decades, certain people have come along who bring out your best work. When you work with this kind of human, not necessarily a niche, but this kind of human and client you care about deeply, the whole thing sings. You do your best work, they get the best results, and there's alignment in values."
When you think about an actual ideal client, which we call the hidden opportunity because people usually just acknowledge that there's a human they serve best, you recognize that there's a values alignment.
And this might sound crazy to say because Orsi's begging for an appointment, but not everybody wants what you offer.
Leonard Raskin: Right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Not everybody wants this kind of relationship with their financial advisor or wealth manager, or wants to be known this well. Not everybody wants to be asked the question, "How much is enough?" or would find that liberating.
There are a lot of things I could go on about. You've unpacked probably ten different markers of who would be a great fit for Raskin Global.
When we unpack that, it gives someone in your position a target to speak to. We're no longer talking about a niche. We're talking about the humans we serve best.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Let's tell that story.
Leonard Raskin: In our statement of purpose, there's a very simple line about who we are. I talked about the crab feast earlier. One of the things that's really important is that I've got to want to invite you to my home for dinner. Meet my family, come over to the house.
When I started in business, not right away, but about 35 years ago, a mentor who was a senior member of the firm I was with at the time told me, "You should never invite someone to your home."
Here's their rationale: "Half the people you invite will think your home is too large, and half the people will think it's too small, and you can't win."
And what I said, as you talked about ripping up the rule book and creating our own, was, "I'm not inviting them to come and critique my house. I'm inviting them to spend time with me and my family, enjoy our company, and have a chance to talk and enjoy each other's company. If they think my house is too small or too big, that's on them. What I want to do is see if we can break bread and have a nice evening together."
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Yeah.
Leonard Raskin: I love being invited to clients' homes. I love having people over, going out to dinner with the people we work with, or just hanging out. I love being invited to graduations, bar mitzvahs, christenings, weddings, and other occasions because it lets me know that these are our people.
The crab feast isn't held at our home because it's just not an appropriate venue size-wise. But we hold that event every year, and people come and bring their kids, parents, siblings, and friends. They say, "This is a comfortable place. I can't wait."
I have people who get the save-the-date notice and are so angry and upset if they can't come that year because they have to be out of town. They say, "I'm so upset I can't be there. Oh my God, I'm going to miss it!"
That's the niche, Matt. That's who we're talking to.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Leonard, how many new clients do you win on average from your crab feast? Do you know?
Leonard Raskin: Well, I will tell you this: there hasn't been one in the last 10 years where some number of guests invited hasn't covered the entire cost of the event financially. That I'm certain of.
It's gotten bigger and bolder, and not more costly, that's the wrong word. The price has gone up because we used to have 20 people, and now we have hundreds.
One of the people we work with recently said, "This thing must cost you a fortune."
I said, "Well, why do you say that?"
And they said, "Well, you don't eat small crabs." We do jumbo crabs and lots of sides, and last year we had dueling pianos. We have lots of fun, and we don't talk business. The entire event is people hanging out with people.
It's come to the point where, if you don't get there early, the people you sat with last year might be sitting with somebody else, but they find their way to sit together.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Okay.
Leonard Raskin: And this is what it's about.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: This is why I wanted to unpack that, because I know you're not doing it to win clients.
Leonard Raskin: We're not.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Again, a big part of what we're teaching people is how much value there is in showing up as a human.
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And I would argue that a secondary purpose of your crab feast could be called, and again, you're not doing it for this reason, your version of a marketing event.
Leonard Raskin: There's no question. There is no question about it. If we didn't have that behind it, there'd be no reason to invite guests, and we wouldn't talk to those people. We would just be eating. I'd be eating crabs all night.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's right. Trusting that human connection is enough is why it's successful, because there's so much anxiety about proving to people that we know what we're doing and that we're qualified.
Leonard Raskin: Let's be beings first. Let's be before we're doing.
I'll give you another example. Last year was the first time in six years that my son was able to come to the crab feast. He'd been at Ohio State for undergrad and then in Ireland for his master's, and he took a year off between that and starting his PhD.
Most of the people we work with have known my wife and son at some point, and some of them have known them since before he was born and before I was married. They've seen him go to preschool, elementary school, play in the band, move from junior high to high school, and then they've followed the questions of where Matthew was going to college. We sent out announcements about where he would go to our clients, then about grad school, and now about his PhD.
Last year, he was able to be there. Most people hadn't seen him since he was young, in high school, partly because he didn't want to come before.
But last year, he wanted to be there, and he was. We did a multiple-choice questionnaire that he and my wife wrote about Baltimore and Maryland history. Every table had a basket of great Baltimore goodies, and the person who got the most answers right at the table got to take home the basket.
There were crab mallets, Berger cookies, Ravens cups, Orioles cups, and all kinds of cool things. He hosted the multiple-choice quiz from the front of the room, and he was shocked and appalled at how many people knew him, even though he didn't know any of them. They all knew him because they know us.
If we're not breaking bread, I don't want your money.
Orsolya: I want to know, has it always been this way? Did you really know from the start that being relational was important to you and that these were your values? Or have you ever gone down the wrong road, learned from it, and thought, "Wait a minute, this doesn't feel right"?
Can you talk to us about some of the tensions that came up in your life as you were trying to run your business? Because if you were like this from day one, that's incredible.
Leonard Raskin: That would be a lie.
Orsolya: Okay.
Leonard Raskin: So here's the thing. When I started 40 years ago, I wasn't on my own. As a new advisor, I was told to find everyone in my family and among my friends, my family's friends, and my friends' families, and bring them into the firm to work with a senior advisor who would tell them what to do with their money.
It was straight financial sales: insurance, investments, banking. It was purely sales.
Sadly, eight out of ten people who start in the career fail. It's because they don't know how to market themselves, they don't know how to find new clients, and when that initial group runs out, they're done.
What I saw was that this was a way for the senior people in the firm, who didn't know how to prospect, to prospect through the junior advisors. These junior people, including me, would bring in their contacts, and when they ran out of people, they ran out of income. The senior people didn't want them anymore. They were never fired because there was always a desk available, but they quit out of frustration because they weren't producing.
For me, I didn't have any of those people. My family and friends were poor. Growing up, I was so poor we couldn't pay attention. Like I said, I started working at 14 to help pay the bills. I didn't have rich friends or a wealthy family.
I recognized early on that it was a sales career, purely financial sales, and I didn't want to do that. So I had to find a way to meet people and talk to them about what we could do for them.
It took about five to ten years to turn it from purely financial sales into something where I could say, "No, these are people we want to be with."
Around that time, I met a guy who said something similar to what I mentioned earlier. He said, "You will know you've made it when you're invited to clients' weddings and when you have to go to a funeral. When you're invited to a bris, a christening, or a communion, and it's not somebody in your family or among your friends, and these people bring you into their homes."
I said, "That's what I want to do. That's how I want to be."
During my first ten years, I was told that one way to find clients was to get involved with a charity or two. Go to a hospital, find an art association or art museum, or get involved in something. They said, "You're not going to get clients right away because you have to contribute first. After a while, people will recognize you, and they'll come work with you."
I never did it. It felt so out of integrity to me. It was dreadful.
Today, we work with a number of charities, but I do it because I care about the charity and its cause. They're legitimately part of our world, and they're the charities we want to help, raise money for, and bring value to.
Quite frankly, I don't care whether a client comes out of that or not. It's not something I do to generate business.
This integrity piece was always really important to me, but it took a while to figure out how to implement it throughout the practice because I was too stubborn to quit. I was too stubborn to follow the party line. I made enough to survive, but I didn't make enough to really get ahead.
Over time, the people I met, as Matt said, were the human beings we wanted to work with. And strangely enough, guess what? They hang out with other cool people who are great human beings.
And through osmosis, things happen.
Here's another thing: I'm really, really bad at asking people to introduce me to others. Really bad. I've gone to coaches, referral coaches, and all these people, and I've listened to them explain, "This is how you ask, this is what you say, and this is what you do."
Orsi, you asked earlier about scaling. If I had asked the people I'd worked with successfully to introduce me to others, I probably would have scaled a lot faster and a lot sooner. But I wouldn't have been able to work with the people I wanted to work with and avoid working with people I didn't want to work with. I wouldn't be where I am now.
Because now I don't ask anybody.
Leonard Raskin: I never did, and I never have. But we're going to have, I don't know, 20 to 50 couples and guests at this year's crab feast whom we've never met before, and some of them will invariably come to work with us.
Other people just... I wake up, check my email, and there's somebody saying, "I want you to meet Orsi." And that's the best compliment we can get. Somebody saying, "This is my best friend, and I want you to meet them," or, "This is my sister and brother, and I want you to talk to them."
That's all we can ask for. So that's our niche. Our niche is the people we care about, who care about us and tell other people about us.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Leonard, I want to ask, for a moment, because we're touching on it: what have you been doing in terms of marketing that has been successful? You and I talked about several things the other day that you're regularly doing, but what's working for you when it comes to meeting these people?
Leonard Raskin: Yeah, great. I spend more than is valuable. Let's put it that way.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's most people.
Leonard Raskin: Right.
Leonard Raskin: I have a great colleague of mine who's now retiring and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's someone I've known for a long time. He has a great practice and has decided to retire.
A few years ago, maybe five years ago, he had a podcast. He had a publisher on his podcast, and here's what this guy said that blew me away: "Have you ever wanted to write a book, but you never felt like you could write a book? I'm your guy."
I thought, "What does that mean?" So I listened.
He runs a company called Paperback Expert. His name is Michael Delon, and his company interviews you, has a writer ghostwrite and craft the book, and then publishes it.
I've always wanted to do that for years, but I would never have sat down and written a book. Never. So I spoke my book into existence. That's Fiducie Who?, the book I wrote, which Michael published.
Then he gave me instructions on how to use the book. One of the things he said was, "You can do a podcast for your book."
So we did a few episodes just talking about the book, and then we started interviewing other people about finance. Now we interview all kinds of people about all kinds of things. We have Fiducie Who?, the podcast.
Leonard Raskin: Michael invited me to meet a colleague of his who is a service coach. The guy is a former Disney World employee, and part of his big mission is helping people "Disney-fy" their businesses by creating service experiences that make people want to come back over and over again and spend more money.
I met this guy, and what he did in a two-day session was unbelievable. It was over the top, and I said, "I want to hire this guy." So I did.
We've now worked together for a number of years. He came in and did a marketing audit of the practice, saying, "You should be doing this and this and this."
So we now have a newsletter. We also have a magazine that goes out every other month. It has nothing to do with money. It's all about homeownership, nutrition, great recipes, and other cool things people like to receive.
I also have a friend who does a local radio show here in Baltimore. He talks about sports and has now branched out into politics and other interesting topics. So I said, "I want to be on that."
I now record with him. He does interviews once a week, and I sit down with him to talk about sports, money, travel, music, and whatever else comes to mind.
I've also joined a number of organizations where CEOs spend time together. EO Baltimore is one, and the CEO Club of Baltimore is another.
In each of those groups, I'm a sponsor whose job is to be available to members who have questions in my field. I can't solicit the group, and I'm not a full member, but I'm there to help if someone has a question.
In each group, once or twice a year, I give an educational presentation.
Leonard Raskin: A number of those things haven't generated any business for me whatsoever. My team says to me, "Well, why the heck are we still doing this?"
There's also a lot of charitable work, as I mentioned earlier. We sponsor a lot of charitable events. So why are we doing these things if they generate no revenue?
I'll tell you a really funny story. I find this amusing.
Kelly, who's been with me for 25 years, asked me one of the questions before she came to work with me. She was a single mom back then with a young child, and she asked, "How much pro bono work do we do?"
I said, "We really don't. We do very little because we're a for-profit entity." It's just that simple. It's hard to do a lot of pro bono work when you need to make money.
She thought we should do more pro bono work, and I said, "That's great. You can learn what I know and how we do things, and you can give away all the time you'd like in your business. That's perfectly fine."
That was then, maybe ten years ago. I had an opportunity to do some pro bono work on a grand scale for an organization, and Kelly came to me and said, "We don't have time for you to do that. We need to make money here. We don't have time for you to give away all these hours."
It's funny how things change over time.
I've spent time and money on a lot of things that don't generate direct revenue, but they're things I want to do and things I love to do. And some of them are probably things I shouldn't be doing anymore.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I want to point out a few things there, Leonard. First of all, you might be surprised by how much revenue has been generated if you could see the connections.
Leonard Raskin: You're probably right. You're probably right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: More importantly, you're running the plays we teach in the Scale Beyond Referrals program, starting with the introductory workshop. Shameless plug!
Leonard Raskin: It's okay.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I'll get back to that later, right? But you're doing it because you're showing up.
Leonard Raskin: That's right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: You're showing up as a human in all these things. You know what I didn't hear you say?
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: "We focus on writing helpful blog articles. We have ads on the internet."
Leonard Raskin: Nothing.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: "We have social media posts that people really enjoy." And it's not that any of those things are bad, but in the absence of these opportunities to meet the human and the heart behind a founder-led and founder-driven business like yours, they're not going to accomplish the mission.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: You're running all the plays we teach people. And you didn't even mention webinars, which I know you do. That's another place for people to get to know you.
Leonard Raskin: Educational. Correct. Yes, yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Your radio show, the crab feast, the podcast, engaging with other organizations...
Orsolya: A book.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: The networking organizations, EO, and the charity work. That's six or seven different ways for people to get to know you as a person.
Leonard Raskin: Oh, there's a ton.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: There's a ton of ways.
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And that's how the whole game is won, in our view.
Leonard Raskin: I'll give you another example. Again, I don't do this myself, but when I finish a podcast, it's recorded and distributed across the podcast platforms. Then I have a guy who takes parts of the podcast and posts them on social media. I guess he uses AI, but I don't know exactly how it works.
He creates a cartoon version of me. You've got to see them. They're on LinkedIn. It looks just like me, and I'm usually wearing a Hawaiian shirt, so the cartoon has a Hawaiian shirt, too. It's me talking to the guest, using audio from the actual podcast. It's not fake. It's me, and my guy handles the whole thing.
People comment on it all the time. What's great is that I asked him, "Could you make me a little thinner?"
He said, "I will when you lose weight!"
Then I asked, "How about putting me in a Ravens jersey in front of M&T Bank Stadium, or an Orioles jersey in front of Camden Yards?"
Now, depending on what he's posting, cartoon me is hanging out at one stadium or the other, wearing my jersey. He's out and about on social media.
My guy told me, "People like video, and people are going to eat this up."
And it's exactly what you said, Matt. It's about being human, laughing, and having a good time.
I'm not out there buying Google ads or Facebook ads. I've never bought a Google ad or a Facebook ad. It's not that I don't have time to write blogs or post on LinkedIn. I just don't have the desire to do it. Talking is how I communicate best. If I had to write everything myself, I never would have written the book. It would never have happened.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Again, Leonard, you've pointed out something important with the cartoon and everything else. People tend to undervalue things like showing that you're willing to have fun and don't take yourself too seriously.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: For the right audience, the people who are the right fit for you, that's the right signal to send.
Leonard Raskin: That's right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: It's about the specific storytelling you need to do. That's where the power is.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Leonard Raskin: When we're in a meeting with someone, everything is serious. We're dealing with people's lives.
One of the things that's so critical, and why I believe so strongly in this, is the reason I named my book Fiducie Who? People are literally entrusting us with their financial future. If we screw it up, it's horrible. It can destroy lives.
I see people fall for Ponzi schemes or invest in something they know nothing about and lose fortunes. It hurts my soul when that happens. I've had people we've worked with take money away from our management to pursue something harebrained that we begged them not to do. They've never come back wealthier. Never.
Orsolya: Leonard, it's so important to connect everything you're saying to your specific experience and to that of many of our listeners who provide B2B services. Think about the amount of trust someone needs to have to walk through your door, given what you're dealing with and the service you provide.
The only way to market that is to be experienced as an expert in your field. And the way you serve the whole human is also how people need to experience you as a whole human when they're deciding to work with you.
I think the best marketing tactics, which is why we're advocating for this approach, are the ones that build trust from the very beginning. It can't be a Google ad. None of what you do would fit in an ad anyway.
Leonard Raskin: No, correct. Correct.
A woman I worked with told me something years and years ago, probably 38 or 39 years ago. She said, "Look, if somebody doesn't work with you, they either didn't like you or they didn't trust you."
Then she said something really important: "And either of those are okay because that's not someone you want to work with."
You want to work with people who like you and trust you. If they don't, you don't want to force that relationship.
I don't know all the businesses you serve, but in my business, I tell people right up front in our first meeting, "You're deciding whether you want to work with me, and I'm deciding whether I want to work with you."
We're going to be on the phone, meeting in person, or connecting on Zoom. We're going to be in touch for a long time. If you get on a call with me and think, "Ugh, I have to talk to Orsi," that's not a relationship that's going to work for either of us. That would be dreadful. Dreadful.
I've met people in the first meeting and told them, "You know, you should probably find somebody else. This isn't going to produce the results you're looking for. We're just not the right people for you."
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: But Leonard, so many B2B owners, founders, and people leading these kinds of service businesses don't give themselves permission to have that conversation at the beginning, even though it's so important.
Leonard, we're about out of time, and we have one more mission to accomplish.
Leonard Raskin: Sure. Sure, sure.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I wish we had more time. Your enthusiasm for the people you serve, your genuine heart, and your sense of purpose and mission are contagious. I feel reinvigorated to serve our people just by spending time with you. So, I thank you for that.
Leonard Raskin: Thank you.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Before we get to this last bit, I want to put a fine point on two things really quickly.
One is that the scalability of showing up as a human comes from showing up in front of a lot of humans who are the right fit.
Leonard Raskin: Yes. Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Your radio show reaches a certain number of people, as do your podcast and your crab feast. All of those are opportunities for many people to experience you.
That's just something for people listening to keep in mind. When you think about showing up as a human, it's not just one-on-one. That's where the scalability comes in.
Leonard Raskin: I'll add one other thing. I firmly believe, with all my heart and soul, that if I meet you today and today's not the right time, I'm not going anywhere. All I have to do is be around, and when the time comes, if I'm the guy, fantastic.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: The other thing I want to pull out of this for our listeners is that you've shared a lot of powerful things today, but you've given me one thing I'm actually going to steal and add to our training.
For B2B service providers, I give people a list of questions to help them identify that hidden opportunity and their ideal client. But I hadn't thought to ask this: "Is this someone you would want to invite to dinner?"
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: What a wonderful question to ask. And then you gave us a way to measure success, too. Success can really be measured when they start inviting you to things.
Leonard Raskin: Right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's such a simple, beautiful way to think about it.
Leonard Raskin: It is.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I have to transition us to our last thing because we don't want to miss this opportunity, and you're such a cool guy.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I want to point out a few things there, Leonard. First of all, you might be surprised by how much revenue has been generated if you could see the connections.
Leonard Raskin: You're probably right. You're probably right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: More importantly, you're running the plays we teach in the Scale Beyond Referrals program, starting with the introductory workshop. Shameless plug!
Leonard Raskin: It's okay.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I'll get back to that later. But you're doing it because you're showing up.
Leonard Raskin: That's right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: You're showing up as a human in all these things. You know what I didn't hear you say?
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: "We focus on writing helpful blog articles. We have ads on the internet."
Leonard Raskin: Nothing.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: "We have social media posts that people really enjoy." And it's not that any of those things are bad, but in the absence of opportunities to meet the human and the heart behind a founder-led and founder-driven business like yours, they're not going to accomplish the mission.
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: You're running all the plays we teach people. You didn't even mention webinars, which I know you do. That's another place for people to get to know you.
Leonard Raskin: Educational. Correct. Yes, yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Your radio show, the crab feast, the podcast, engaging with other organizations...
Orsolya: A book.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: The networking organizations, EO, and the charity work. That's six or seven different ways for people to get to know you as a person.
Leonard Raskin: Oh, there's a ton.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: There's a ton of ways.
Leonard Raskin: Absolutely.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: And that's how the whole game is won, in our view.
Leonard Raskin: And when we're in a meeting with someone, everything is serious. We're dealing with people's lives.
One of the things that's so critical, and why I believe so strongly in this, is the reason I named my book Fiducie Who? People are literally entrusting us with their financial future. If we screw it up, it's horrible. It can destroy lives.
I see people fall for Ponzi schemes or invest in something they know nothing about and lose fortunes. It hurts my soul when that happens. I've had people we've worked with take money away from our management to pursue something harebrained that we begged them not to do. They've never come back wealthier. Never.
Orsolya: Leonard, it's so important to connect everything you're saying to your specific experience and to that of many of our listeners who provide B2B services. Think about the amount of trust someone needs to have to walk through your door, given what you're dealing with and the service you provide.
The only way to market that is to be experienced as an expert in your field. And the way you serve the whole human is also how people need to experience you as a whole human when they're deciding to work with you.
I think the best marketing tactics, which is why we're advocating for this approach, are the ones that build trust from the very beginning. It can't be a Google ad. None of what you do would fit in an ad anyway.
Leonard Raskin: No, correct. Correct.
A woman I worked with told me something years and years ago, probably 38 or 39 years ago. She said, "Look, if somebody doesn't work with you, they either didn't like you or they didn't trust you."
Then she said something really important: "And either of those are okay because that's not someone you want to work with."
You want to work with people who like you and trust you. If they don't, you don't want to force that relationship.
I don't know all the businesses you serve, but in my business, I tell people right up front in our first meeting, "You're deciding whether you want to work with me, and I'm deciding whether I want to work with you."
We're going to be on the phone, meeting in person, or connecting on Zoom. We're going to be in touch for a long time. If you get on a call with me and think, "Ugh, I have to talk to Orsi," that's not a relationship that's going to work for either of us. That would be dreadful. Dreadful.
I've met people in the first meeting and told them, "You know, you should probably find somebody else. This isn't going to produce the results you're looking for. We're just not the right people for you."
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: But Leonard, so many B2B owners, founders, and people leading these kinds of service businesses don't give themselves permission to have that conversation at the beginning, even though it's so important.
Leonard, we're about out of time, and we have one more mission to accomplish.
Leonard Raskin: Sure. Sure, sure.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I wish we had more time. Your enthusiasm for the people you serve, your genuine heart, and your sense of purpose and mission are contagious. I feel reinvigorated to serve our people just by spending time with you. So, I thank you for that.
Leonard Raskin: Thank you.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Before we get to this last bit, I want to put a fine point on two things really quickly.
One is that the scalability of showing up as a human comes from showing up in front of a lot of humans who are the right fit.
Leonard Raskin: Yes. Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Your radio show reaches a certain number of people, as do your podcast and your crab feast. All of those are opportunities for many people to experience you.
That's just something for people listening to keep in mind. When you think about showing up as a human, it's not just one-on-one. That's where the scalability comes in.
Leonard Raskin: I'll add one other thing. I firmly believe, with all my heart and soul, that if I meet you today and today's not the right time, I'm not going anywhere. All I have to do is be around, and when the time comes, if I'm the guy, fantastic.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: The other thing I want to pull out of this for our listeners is that you've shared a lot of powerful things today, but you've given me one thing I'm actually going to steal and add to our training.
For B2B service providers, I give people a list of questions to help them identify that hidden opportunity and their ideal client. But I hadn't thought to ask this: "Is this someone you would want to invite to dinner?"
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: What a wonderful question to ask. And then you gave us a way to measure success, too. Success can really be measured when they start inviting you to things.
Leonard Raskin: Right.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's such a simple, beautiful way to think about it.
Leonard Raskin: It is.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: I have to transition us to our last thing because we don't want to miss this opportunity, and you're such a cool guy.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: We have something called the Behind the Brand questionnaire.
Leonard Raskin: Sure.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: To stay true to our values, we want to make sure that, just as you're doing with your clients, we give people a chance to get to know you as a person. We have seven questions to help people get to know the human behind the brand. Off we go.
Leonard Raskin: Let's do it.
Orsolya: What is your favorite karaoke song? And if you don't have one, what song would you love to sing or know how to sing?
Leonard Raskin: Oh, my goodness. This is from around 1982 or 1983: "Ain't Nothing Gonna Break My Stride." You know that one? Probably a one-hit wonder, but it has such great words in it. This was before I started in business. It was like a high school song, but that chorus just sounded so great. That's the one.
Orsolya: Love it.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Great song for finance. That's what my advisor is always telling me: "Don't give up. Stay in the market. Don't pull your stuff out."
Leonard Raskin: That too, yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Leonard, what is the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Leonard Raskin: Oh, my goodness. That's a tough one. Probably just this morning.
I was in the office when a delivery arrived for my assistant, who now lives in San Diego. I have to open these packages to see what she's sending because when she buys things for the firm, like toner cartridges, they come in boxes addressed to her.
I opened the box, and it had two boxes of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets and a giant box of Peppermint Patties. I thought, "What? Why is she sending this here when she lives in San Diego? What's going on?"
So I called her and asked, "Care to tell me why we have this box here?"
My other assistant, Susan, had told Kelly that she wasn't supposed to eat all this sugar. Meanwhile, we keep a big bowl of Peppermint Patties at the front of the office, and we replenish it all the time. But the bowl was empty.
Susan told Kelly, "You've got to order more Peppermint Patties."
Kelly said, "We just ordered them."
Susan replied, "I ate them all. You've got to order more."
So Kelly ordered a box of Butterscotch Krimpets, figuring that if Susan was going to get Peppermint Patties, she might as well get Butterscotch Krimpets, too.
I just started laughing. I said, "You've got to be kidding me!"
Orsolya: Amazing.
Leonard Raskin: At least I know what I can eat now. I'll have Butterscotch Krimpets and Peppermint Patties in the office. I had a good laugh about that this morning.
Orsolya: Leonard, what's your favorite way to get away from it all?
Leonard Raskin: My wife would tell you that I love watching sports. I'm a sports fanatic. But the other big thing is going on vacation. I like my toes in the sand, a drink in my hand, or sitting by a pool.
My wife and son love adventure. They don't like to vacation too much. We go away and tour the entire area wherever we are. It becomes this whole rush-rush, see this, see that, see everything. Then I come home and need a vacation!
I'm leaving this week, as we're recording this, to go to Brazil for a week. We're going to hang out at Copacabana Beach, enjoy the sand and some drinks, and hopefully watch a Ravens game while we're there. A combination of a good sporting event and toes in the sand is about as good as it gets.
Orsolya: Love it.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: That's great. Leonard, what smell reminds you of a specific place or time?
Leonard Raskin: My mother lives in a high-rise condo building. She's a Jewish grandmother, and around the holidays, you walk into those halls and it smells like fresh, homemade chicken soup and brisket in the oven. It's phenomenal.
It reminds me of being a kid and walking into my grandmother's house. That's what it smelled like, and the whole family was there. Lots of great traditions and family memories.
When we walk in and those dishes are cooking, you can smell them before you even reach the hallway. It's magnificent. That's as good as it gets.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Great.
Orsolya: Leonard, is there a day in your life that you would love to relive?
Leonard Raskin: A day I'd love to relive? Wow. This might seem kind of crazy, but December 1999.
In May that year, I was rushed to the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack. I was 34 years old, and thankfully, I wasn't. I had atrial fibrillation, and my heart was beating irregularly. It was all kind of crazy.
Duke University Hospital was performing an experimental procedure called an ablation for atrial fibrillation. It was being done in only a couple of other places in the world. Medication hadn't worked for my condition, so they offered me the procedure.
I remember asking the doctor, "What's your success rate?"
He said, "It's about 80% the first time. If we need to go in again, it's 95%."
I asked, "What's the long-term outcome?"
He said, "You'll let us know, because we've only been doing this for a year."
It was kind of wild, but I said, "Let's go ahead and do it."
The night before the procedure, I went out to dinner with my wife, her parents, and my mother. Everyone was nervous. I was really nervous, too. We went to a steakhouse because I said, "This could be the last supper, so I'm going to have a big, fat steak dinner." It didn't really matter at that point whether my arteries were clogged. They were going into my heart the next day anyway.
We had a great dinner. I went in at 6:30 the next morning, and they put me under. The procedure was supposed to take about four hours, but it lasted 14 hours.
Before I went under, I remember praying that I would live. I didn't know it had been 14 hours until afterward, but I remember a nurse calling my name: "Mr. Raskin. Mr. Raskin. Wake up, Mr. Raskin."
I woke up looking at the ceiling in the operating room. He asked, "How are you doing?"
I said, "Are you alive?"
He said, "Yes, I'm alive."
I replied, "Then I'm doing great, because I'm alive."
It might seem like a strange thing to want to relive, but when you think you might not be here anymore and someone tells you you're alive, that's a pretty good moment. After everything I went through, I'd relive that day just to hear, "Yes, you're alive."
We're not in the Matrix. I'm alive. This is good!
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Wow.
Leonard Raskin: It was outstanding.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: What three words would your loved ones use to describe you?
Leonard Raskin: Caring, for sure. Giving and crazy, in a fun way. Fun. You've got to have fun.
If I can't do what I do, as serious as it is, and still laugh, then we're not the right fit. We've got to laugh. We've got to make the heavy light, make the real real, and laugh. So, fun in a crazy way. Crazy fun, caring, and giving, for sure.
Orsolya: I would say "funzy."
Leonard Raskin: There you go. Funzy. I like that word. It's a good word. Yes, indeed.
Orsolya: What would it mean to you to have truly succeeded in your work? Not your company, but you personally?
Leonard Raskin: Oh, it's already happened. There's no question.
I know it when people thank me for what I do and for what we've meant to their families, for the peace of mind we've given them, and all of that. That's all the thanks and gratitude I could ask for. Nothing more is needed.
People come in and say, "You know, we're getting ready to retire. We couldn't have done this without you."
Or take the couple where the husband, my friend and client, was diagnosed with ALS. Sadly, he passed away. At 6:30 in the morning, his son called me and said, "Dad passed in his sleep last night."
I was the first person the family called. They asked, "What do we do now?"
I said, "Well, where is he?"
They said, "He's in bed."
I told them, "What you do now is call the funeral home, because you don't leave him in bed."
They had no idea what to do next, so we took care of that.
I went to the funeral with my wife, and we spent time with the family. Every year on July 4th, we get together for crabs, either at their place at the beach or ours. A couple of years ago, it was our turn to host, and it was the first time he wasn't there. He had died in June.
After dinner, we sat around and talked about what came next. We talked about their financial future, and the tears from everyone there were overwhelming. They thanked me for all the years we'd spent together and for what we'd meant to their family.
Then, about two months ago, Kathy and I attended the second of their children's weddings.
For the first wedding, the daughter moved it up so her father could be there. It was in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, at the top of a mountain. Kathy and I flew out and took the lift up the mountain in our gowns and tuxedos, wearing coats. It was snowing, and it was beautiful.
The second wedding was at their home, where the children grew up. That was just a month or so ago, and we were there for their second child's wedding.
Afterward, their son came up to me and said, "I'm so thankful for what you've done for my family and that you could be here to share this with us."
That's success. I could tell you stories like that all day long. They tell me that everything we did was right, that we acted in their best interests and fulfilled our fiduciary responsibilities all the way through.
Nothing could be a better answer to that question.
Orsolya: I love that. It's almost as if work and life are no different for you.
Leonard Raskin: Correct.
Orsolya: Life and work equally drive you to live out your values.
Leonard Raskin: That's right.
Orsolya: It's so...
Leonard Raskin: You're absolutely right. Thank you.
When people ask me, "Are you going to retire?" I say, "Why? To do what? To do what? I'm living! I've got the greatest of all. I travel, I have a great family, I get to work with great people, I get to help them accomplish and achieve great things, I get thanked for what I do, and I get paid for it. What could be better?"
There's no stopping this. No stopping this.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Since you're planning to be around for a while, what's the best way for people to reach you?
Leonard Raskin: Yes.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Orsi has already set us up with an appointment.
Orsolya: Yep.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: How do the rest of them do that?
Leonard Raskin: You can find me. Just email me at [email protected]. And don't be weirded out when you type that. It looks like Raskin Global because of the way the G comes in there. It's just one G: [email protected].
You can find me on Facebook and LinkedIn under Raskin Global. Leonard Raskin also has a page.
You can find my book, Fiducie Who?, on Amazon or on the front page of our website, raskinglobal.com. Get yourself a copy. We also have an audiobook if you prefer listening to reading. I've narrated it myself, which turns my son's stomach because he says, "Oh my God, I've got to listen to you even more? I've got to listen to you more!" Then we laugh.
You can find me anywhere, through any of those channels.
Orsolya: It's amazing.
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: Leonard, it's a joy to know you. I've had the chance to have a couple of great conversations with you, and I'm so grateful for that. Orsi has known you a little longer, but I'm glad you've crossed our paths and the paths of our listeners. I hope they reach out. Thank you for your time today. From our side, absolutely…
Matt Wolfe, Brand3: From our side, if you liked the themes we discussed around B2B marketing, the Scale Beyond Referrals program is designed for B2B service providers who have probably given up on marketing, or who have felt frustrated, disappointed, or discouraged by it at some point, and are trying to get by on referrals and word of mouth.
We help restore people's faith in marketing and find a path that makes it less digital and more human.
The best way to learn more is to visit scalebeyondreferrals.com, where you'll find information about attending one of our introductory workshops, which take place every month.
With that, it's time to say farewell.
We'll see you next time. This has been Matt Wolfe and Orsi Herbein with Leonard Raskin on The CEO's Heart for Service. We'll see you next time.
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