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Advisor’s Popular Podcast Tackles Hot Financial Topics

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When the pandemic was raging in June 2020, with a volatile stock market, financial advisor Dewey Steffen launched the “What Dewey Do?” podcast. 

It was to help his clients at Great Lakes Wealth — of which he is founder, CEO and chief investment officer — and others in the community navigate financially and otherwise.

To date, the hit show has scored more than 2.5 million social media views.

Who’s listening? Who’s viewing? Mainly a younger audience, Steffen tells ThinkAdvisor in an interview. The show’s topics have included ChatGPT, the cannabis industry and cryptocurrency.

“When we started, [the podcast] … was geared toward our clients and potential clients,” he says. “Then we realized that the clients, and older folks in general, weren’t listening to podcasts. But for Gen Z’s and millennials, it’s totally their thing.”

Interview guests have included Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame and Jan VanEck, CEO of VanEck investment management, as well as celebrities like swimmer Peter Vanderkaay, a four-time Olympic medalist.

In the lighthearted biweekly podcast, Steffen delves into financial topics with an easy-to-understand approach.

“It establishes us as an expert in the industry,” he said in the interview, “and allows [potential prospects] to view us as relevant, established and professional.”

Targeting “the emerging affluent,” Steffen says, the firm oversees a combined $220 million of assets under management and assets under advisement, including his Great Lakes Private Wealth, which targets clients with $2.5 million and above in investable assets.

Steffen, 52, with 28 years of investment management experience, provides a dozen portfolio models — eight traditional strategies and four custom models — from “super-safe” to “super-aggressive,” he notes.

In the recent phone interview with Steffen, who was speaking from Northville, he supplies his view on a possible recession and names the asset class that’s “king” right now. Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: Why is your podcast “What Dewey Do?” so popular with younger people?

DEWEY STEFFEN: When we started, it wasn’t geared to the younger listener or viewer; it was geared toward our clients and potential clients in the community.

Then we realized that the clients, and older folks in general, weren’t listening to podcasts. But for the Gen Z’s and millennials, it’s totally their thing.

So we’ve evolved: We now promote the podcast directly to those generations.

What makes your podcast different?

We go into the topics that are top-of-mind right now, particularly with younger listeners and viewers.

We did one recently on ChatGPT. We’ve done two or three cannabis interviews and two or three on cryptocurrency investing. [Another is] “Top 5 Ways to Millionaire Status by 30.”

What’s the basic appeal of “What Dewey Do”?

Probably, the content, the production, the promotion, the passion behind it.

It’s a labor of love to give back to the community.

Please describe the show.

Originally, it was just me being interviewed by a co-host about the topic du jour.

Now we have guests on. We have episodes with leaders in the community [and others] that have a story to tell, knowledge to share and advice to give.

It’s more of a videocast than a podcast of audio-only.

You can see our guests being interviewed, and we have graphics that explain things.

Has the podcast helped your firm’s business?

There hasn’t really been a direct ROI. We never thought there would be.

But it’s helped our business dramatically because of two main things: It establishes us as an expert in the industry and allows folks that would qualify as potential clients to view us as relevant, established and professional.

What’s the origin of the podcast?

In March-June 2020 during the pandemic, the market was extremely volatile and going down every day. I was on radio and TV being asked what to do. 

Then a local radio celebrity and the related production company asked me to launch a podcast to help our community navigate through it all.

What advice did you give?

I said that [investors] should focus on “The Three P’s”: Don’t panic, be patient, execute your plan. All those will stand the test of time.

Since then, we’ve added a fourth “P”: Prepare the process because now it’s time to make some money.

But are you preparing your listeners and viewers for a possible recession?

We’re saying that if there is one, it will be mild — so plan for that. But we may skirt a recession and only have a slowdown in the economy.

What do you think are the best investments at this time?

We believe that investing in hard assets and cash is very important. No. 1 is that cash is king right now. You’re paid very well to have your money in cash.

We did a podcast on this [with an analogy] to a deck of cards: The jack was real estate; the queen was hard assets, like gold; the king was cash. And stocks were aces because stocks can be a 1 or an 11, better than a 10.

The wild card was private investments: private credit, private equity. The second wild card was crypto, a small part of your portfolio.

Your firm provides concierge-style services. What do they entail?

We’re small in size, but we pack a big punch.  

We believe in being proactive and personalized — two more “P’s” — with our client service.

Each client is assigned an entire team of two advisors, a support person and an office administrator.

Our service protocol is that we check in with every client every month. These calls are scheduled. Four are quarterly financial reviews, and once a year we do a financial plan review.

We also commit to 24-hour response — including nights and weekends — to any client’s need or issue that arises.

We have lots of technology and online access, but we still believe in the telephone.


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