Brian Ouellette

9:07 AM Tuesday. Two advisors. Same message from a top client: “Told a friend about you.” One had an ODP™ link. One did not. 1:18 PM Friday. One closed dream client. The other? Crickets. Why’d one win?👇Click below

"The best clients come from referrals, there is no exception."

Brian Ouellette, a University of Washington graduate, began his career on the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) as a runner before returning to Seattle to build his private client practice at PaineWebber. In 2000, he became the Market Commentator for Q13 FOX News This Morning, reporting live daily for over 3 ½ years and making more than 3,000 live TV appearances during one of the most significant boom-and-bust cycles in stock market history.

In 2004, he sold his book of business and founded Shoewallet Active Gear, a product featured on NBC's Today Show, CNN, NY1, and over 250 radio stations, as well as in publications like Shape and Runner's World. Shoewallet produced private label versions for Boeing, the Department of Defense, Skechers, and more across the U.S. and Canada.

In 2010, after reading Sports Illustrated’s "How & Why Athletes Go Broke," Brian recognized the urgent need for athletes to have better advisors. This led him to create Pro Athlete Direct™, an education-based marketing service for advisors to help athletes manage their finances, taxes, legal matters, and real estate needs. His experience helped him develop a system that allowed advisors to build strong connections with sports agents and their athlete clients, guiding them in making strategic financial decisions.

Brian has coached a range of trusted advisors across the U.S. and internationally, including former pro athletes, Barron's Top 100 advisors, Forbes Top Wealth Advisors, and top-producing realtors.

After over 20,000 hours of coaching and R&D, the AskMyAdvisor® referral app was born. This software provides trusted advisors—financial advisors, attorneys, realtors—with a simple way for their top clients to connect them with the people in their lives, making recurring referrals effortless.

“Let’s get straight to the point. After a career as a financial advisor and a coach to the industry’s best, I turned to software for one reason: I discovered how to increase referrals by 800%. The secret? Strip away the complexities that kill referrals. Focus on one thing—a single, exclusive pathway for referrals, accessible only by the top 20% of your client and COI relationships. This approach isn’t just a shift from the old way; it’s revolutionary. And it led directly to the creation of the AskMyAdvisor® Method & OS. Once you see it, you won’t just use it—you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.” – Brian Ouellette

Learn more at tip.askmyadvisor.co/webinar

Founder

After 10 years & +20,000 hours of R&D, we have built the first Q&A app for you (accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, realtors) to share with your top 25 clients to strengthen those relationships & tap into new ones, quickly. 

How does it work? AskMyAdvisor Referral Method Software provides client-facing accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, realtors, venture capitalists, and other trusted advisors with a frictionless method of retaining and growing their best clients. By using the software, they can avoid tech overwhelm, resulting in 5-10 times more referrals on a recurring basis, while working only with clients they love.

It's a simple solution to the problem, "Oh, you've got to call my guy!" Or,  "My financial advisor's great, email her." 

Instead you just share your dedicated URL (format follows: askmyadvisor.app/YOURNAMEOFCHOICE) as a dedicated channel to Q&A where your top clients & the people in their lives can easily ask their questions, get second opinions, etc. 

Members also receive the Phone App (for instant notifications allowing our members to reply to questions within minutes) & get access to The Network. 

This is our private community of our advisor members, who are elite accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, realtors from the US & abroad, to come together. 

This is a private think tank.

Think of it as a Facebook Group  on steroids (BTW, it's our community built from the ground up, so no FB login).

America made 911 a standard in 1968. That standard has changed lives. Advisor referrals? Still running like it's 1967.

Founder, AskMyAdvisor®. 90% of clients would refer their advisor. 80% still don’t. One link. Bottleneck gone.

View newsletter: The AskMyAdvisor Newsletter

Picture this. A building is in flames, and someone is still figuring out who to contact. Referrals shouldn’t work this way, but they do. The building 

Open article: 🚨 If 911 Emergency Calls Worked Like Advisor* Referrals, People Would Die by Brian Ouellette • 5 min read

🚨 If 911 Emergency Calls Worked Like Advisor* Referrals, People Would Die

+5.6M US advisors* accept the complexity of intros (aka referrals) as normal. It's not. Nor it is complicated.

Ask yourself this... Why is a referral ever needed? 

Someone has a question (tax, legal, financial, real estate).
Advisors are experts who can answer. That's it.

Advisors spend +$50B/yr. (avg. of $9k per advisor) putting lipstick on a pig with marketing/sales hacks, tips, etc. 

A few are doing this...
Make it simpler to ask them questions.

That is all.
*Advisors who are accountants, attorneys, consultants, financial advisors, realtors, and other trusted advisors.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐬:
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐤 "The greatest gift you can give me is ten referrals..."
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 "Send three referrals that become clients, get your choice of toaster ovens"
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞 Networking events where everyone pretends to like each other

𝐀𝐬 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬, 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐬.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐤. "The greatest gift you can give me is ten referrals..." 
(Said to the client who already pays you.)

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞. "Send three referrals that become clients, get your choice of toaster ovens." 
(No joke. These were real.)

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐥𝐞. Networking events where everyone pretends to enjoy standing in a hotel ballroom eating cold shrimp and exchanging cards they'll never look at again.

𝐍𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬.
Ok. That's dramatic. It sometimes works.

And because it sometimes works, over 5.6M accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, realtors, and trusted advisors in the US... accept it.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬.
Two people are talking. One (referral) has a question. 

The other knows someone (advisor) who can answer it.

That's it. That's a referral.

It was never about you asking. It was always about them having a question.

Stop asking. Stop bribing. Stop mingling.

Start making it easy for the question to reach you.

We have a simple one page blueprint. 
For the ones who want a clearer picture what I am talking about. And how to fix it, while the other 5.6M advisors stay satisfied with sometimes.

Enter the secret password in the comments below:
𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭

Build Your B2B Content Strategy with my Course

In 2022, I bootstrapped an agency to $1M in 14 months, and sold it in 2023. During this time, I went from 'growth marketer' to 'content marketer' for 1 simple reason: 

B2B buyers educate themselves with content before buying.

- They prefer to discover you with a LinkedIn post
- Then watch a 10-min youtube explaining your POV
- Or reading a newsletter about an in-depth case study

That's how they buy, and you need to adapt.

So you need to create content but the goal is not to become a pop star.

You don't want to follow this weird model where you publish 'engaging stories' and then 'funnel down' people to middle of funnel content.

What you want is to position yourself and your business as an industry authority.

That's why I created the authority-first framework.

To help B2B businesses create content that attract buyers.

- Check out our website here: contentpath.co
- Or you can DM me directly to start working together.

Pierre Herubel

B2B and B2C marketing have one BIG difference:

(Yet many marketers think they're "similar")

The buying decision process is completely different.

In B2B:

- Multiple stakeholders with different roles and objectives.
- They collaborate in a shared "buying project";
- To purchase a solution that will drive ROI.

In B2C:

- One buyer or a small group of relatives;
- Aligned around a single decision.
- So they can decide faster.

As a result, the entire marketing job is different:

- The audience you target
- The message you share
- The content you create
- And how you distribute it

So you're either a B2B marketer, or a B2C marketer.

That said, there are of course common foundations:

- The need for targeting, value proposition, and messaging.
- The importance of a clear market positioning and brand.
- The mandatory social proof, trust, and external reviews.

And in the latest years, we've seen B2B getting closer to B2C;

- Rise of social media and communities as decision hubs;
- More room to influencer marketing and thought leadership;
- And the line between B2B and B2C is fading for solopreneurs.

What other similarities do you see between B2B and B2C marketing?

I help B2B businesses get clients with content

This question will shape your B2B strategy in 2026:

(It impacts your offer, hires, and budget)

"Do you want to build a marketing-led or a sales-led system?"

Here's the difference:

1/Marketing-led 

The efforts are mainly on marketing actions (content, ads, emails...). So you need an offer that is easier to sell and requires fewer 1:1 conversations. 

You maximize the volume of interactions with your ICP and create a frictionless first sale. It's ideal if you target SMEs, midmarket and sell an MRR offer.

2/Sales-led

The efforts are mainly on sales actions (BDR, proposals, calls...). You spend a lot of time in 1:1 conversations but have a high-ticket offer that makes this profitable. 

You maximize the $ACV and $LTV of each deal but spend a lot of time in actions that "don't scale". It's ideal if you target upmarket and enterprises (or if you're in a vertical niche).

So the answer to this question is crucial.

It impacts everything else:

- Your offer: do you want a frictionless MRR offer or a high-ticket offer that requires long sales cycles?

- Your ICP: do you prefer to target midmarket or enterprises? (to be exact, your ICP affects the decision and you can later expand to another ICP with a secondary motion)

- Your day-to-day: do you want to spend your time optimizing 1:1 sales conversations or 1:many marketing actions?

- It also impacts your hires (sales or marketers?), your budget, your energy, your agenda...

I chose a marketing-led approach for my business.

It fits my personality and my skills as a founder.

We still do sales calls, but the heavy lifting is done by content and marketing.

Many founders confuse marketing strategy with tactics:

- They think "running ads" is a strategy;
- They think "posting daily" is a strategy;
- They think "doing webinars" is a strategy.

Because of this confusion, they don't have a high level plan.

- Who are we helping;
- For what problem;
- How we solve it differently;
- And what do we say.

As a result, they lack focus and direction.

- "Let's try this new channel!"
- "I read about a new automation hack!"
- "We don't want to miss this opportunity"

And it puts the business into a reactive posture:

No clear direction → Something external happens → We react to it → We try a new tactic → Intensify the lack of direction

To get out of this reactive marketing loop, you need to:

Distinguish strategy from tactics.

1. Strategy comes first: It's the high-level plan that guides how to achieve revenue goals.

2. Tactics come second: It's the specific actions and methods used to execute the strategy.

And don't forget the feedback loop between them.

Tactics' results always inform the strategic decisions.

Follow me Pierre Herubel for daily marketing tips.

Biggest mistake I see in B2B revenue strategy:

(Read this to increase your revenue in 2026)

Focusing only on adding new qualified opportunities to the pipeline...

...when the sales and upsell systems are inefficient.

Let's call it the "pierced basket syndrome".

Here's what happens:

1. You get leads through marketing and SDRs actions (content, ads, outbound...)

2. But the sales system is not efficient (low closing rate and low initial contract value)

3. And the upsell system is not efficient or nonexistent (low number of upsells and customer lifetime value is not maximized)

As a result, the business is leaking potential revenue.

That's a pierced basket.

Now, here's how to fix the leak.

1. Acknowledge these 2 rules of sales

- Rule 1: It's easier to close a qualified prospect you're already in conversation with than to find a new one from scratch.

- Rule 2: You're far more likely to make a repeat sale with an existing client than with a stranger.

2. Activate more levers than "let's get more leads"

Across marketing, sales, and upsells, you can:

- Increase the quality of opportunities (e.g. go upmarket)
- Increase your show up rate, and closing rate
- Increase your sales velocity (how fast you close)
- Increase the initial average contract value ($iACV)
- Increase the contract duration (e.g. 1 month to 6 months)
- Increase the number of upsells and cross sells
- Increase the number of clients that become ambassadors

Easier said than done, but at least it's diversified.

So the business is not stuck on "getting more leads".

3. Focus on upsells so you can reinvest in marketing

Upsells are a great lever to grow revenue.

The reasons are obvious once you think about it:

- Reason 1: No marketing spend needed as the prospect is already your client.

- Reason 2: Upsells accelerate your CAC payback (you recover acquisition costs faster)

- Reason 3: Because there's no acquisition cost on existing customers, you free up budget to reinvest in marketing.

**

That said, the volume of opportunities is also important:

- You need volume to test and iterate to reinforce the system
- At some point, you need volume to hit the target

But the point stands: it's not the only lever available.

CEO: "We need to align marketing and sales."

Me: "The 1st step is to delete this misconception:"

Marketing stops when the sales process starts.

Here's how that mistake usually goes:

- Marketing is here for awareness and leadgen;
- When those 2 boxes are ticked, it's finished;
- "Ok we sent you a lead, we've done our job!"
- Then it's time for the sales team to shine!

This "funnel" looks like the perfect handoff in theory.

But from the buyer perspective it's the same brand and the same journey.

They don't instantly forget the ads, social content, and videos when they start speaking with your sales team.

Marketing still largely impacts the buying decision during the sales process for 2 reasons:

1. The marketing messages anchored them

They come into the sales process with beliefs and feelings they got from your marketing actions. The messages and insights you shared before have an impact on the sales conversations (objections, objectives, questions).

2. They still see your marketing actions during the sales phase

While talking to your sales team, your prospects keep seeing your posts, videos, emails, or case studies on your website. These actions have a new impact on their decision (it can reinforce a positive feeling or the contrary).

That's why you need to do this:

- Make sure you share the exact same messages across marketing and sales for a coherent journey.

- Don't alternate intense marketing seasons with low marketing seasons. Instead, run evergreen marketing with consistency.

And remember:

For buyers, it's the same brand and the same journey.

There is a weird thing about marketing.

From outside it looks simple, but when you zoom in:

- You need to understand human psychology
- You need to nail foundations like the messaging
- You need patience but also urgency to bring results
- You need to think like an engineer with experimentation

Or, well, all of this could be skipped, but...

... the marketing would not work.

And that's the main point here.

It's extremely easy and fast to do marketing that doesn't bring results.

- Just write a bunch of words that sound cool
- Spend some money on ads to "get leads"

But when you're really involved and try to get results.

It takes knowledge, time, practice, efforts, trials, and patience.

The best way to procrastinate on marketing is this:

- Create a website with 15 pages and 5 offers
- Multiply taglines to fit the 4 different ICPs
- Spend 90% of the time updating the "funnel"

This is a lot of work and it leaves only 10% left to create audience traffic.

So the problem is twofold here:

1. The funnel gets too complex so visitors have decision paralysis: they don't know what to do next.

2. The marketer in charge doesn't have enough time to create content, run ads, send DMs and emails.

But I have good news.

The solution to this problem is simple:

Reverse completely the time allocation.

1. Create a simple website with 1 offer for 1 ICP so it is clear and easy to maintain. Once properly set up, this represents 10% of your time.

2. Spend 90% of the time on generating awareness, authority, and traffic (mainly from content).

This way, your audience sees your content (or ads and emails), visits your simple website, and clicks on the unique CTA. Then, during the sales process, you can sell a clear offer.

That's how you build a solid marketing function.

I've used 3 B2B growth models:

1. The lead generation waterfall model

Publish SEO articles → Host whitepapers → Get leads → Send sequences

2. The growth marketing model

Experiment cold emails → Get leads → Experiment other channels

3. The social-first model

Publish content → Identify intent → Social selling

They were all interesting and efficient.

But in 2026, I now advise to run a "social-first" growth model:

- Publish content across personal brands
- Transform your brand into a media
- Analyze intent to prioritize outbound
- Use AI for all the technical systems

It's clearly a great model now.

- The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is low
- Intent-based outbound increases response rate
- Content contributes to both brand awareness and pipeline

Now of course you can still use some elements of the past models:

- A whitepaper and a webinar can be great
- Growth marketing sprints unlock new channels
- Outbound sequences work well (if signal-based)

And above all, you still need to nail ICP, positioning, messaging.

The model is evolving, but the foundations remain.

I've been doing marketing for 10 years.

These 9 concepts made me a better marketer:

9 Marketing Concepts to know in 2026

I answer the 7 questions I get most about positioning:

(Full positioning masterclass for 2026)

1. How important is positioning?

- When starting, choosing your desired positioning is crucial as it will impact the rest of your marketing and content strategy.

- Forging a positive perceived positioning (how the market perceives you) is a crucial goal of marketing.

So positioning is really a 10/10 in terms of importance.

2. Is positioning different from messaging?

Positioning and messaging are 2 sides of the same coin: if you don't deploy your messages across channels consistently, your positioning stays in your strategy deck.

3. What are the steps of a positioning process?

As shown in the infographic attached:

- Decide how you want to be perceived
- Explain how you will achieve this objective
- Write your messaging strategy
- Deploy messages across brand touchpoints
- Repeat with coherence and consistency
- Your audience shapes their own perception of your brand

4. Who is in charge of positioning?

- It's primarily a shared function between founders (business strategy) and marketing (marketing strategy)

- It's secondarily a responsibility of client-facing teams to respect the positioning (example: sales should follow the core messages)

5. What are the most frequent mistakes in positioning?

- Not having a positioning strategy at all
- Targeting too many ICPs, so the positioning is vague
- Not using the same messages across channels
- Not sticking to a positioning long enough

6. How can you tell if a positioning/messaging strategy is good?

It:

- Instantly targets a clear ICP and use case
- Shares the same messages across channels
- Communicates clearly "what's in it for the client?"
- Makes the business stand out (clear unique selling point)

7. Why is positioning so hard?

Because you cannot control the end goal (the perception of your audience).

You can only influence it with consistency and discipline in your messages.

That's why you need to choose a positioning and stick to it for a long period of time.

Founder: "We're not getting enough inbound leads"

Me: "What's your biggest marketing constraint now?"

Founder: "We're not sure, it's probably our design skills"

The truth is that:

The surface-level constraint is often not the primary cause of low inbound leads.

So you'll need to audit your marketing function entirely.

Here's a 4-step process to do this:

1. Get clarity on the root problem

- Identify the negative symptoms
- Link the symptoms to the root problem
- Audit the problem with an expert (internal or external)

2. Set up a plan, based on the problem's nature

- Turn the audit into recommendations
- Prioritize and plan the implementation
- Set a timeline with key objectives

3. Implement the recommendations

- Execute the top priority actions first
- Fix the problem at its core 
- Install a simple system that won't break

4. Assess and iterate based on the impact

- Monitor carefully the evolution of symptoms
- Analyze if the actions fixed the problem
- Implement new actions based on results

Subject: Marketers need to think more like CFOs in 2026.

Limiting the marketing scope to "leads" creates 3 problems:

1. It creates a misalignment between the marketing function, the sales team, and the business goals.

2. It turns the marketing team into a "lead factory" only committing to volume without clear pipeline impact.

3. Step by step, it isolates the marketing team into a satellite support function ("the art & craft department" / "can you make us a banner?")

This is especially true in industries where the sales-led model is the norm.

Now circling back to my subject:

Marketers need to think more like CFOs.

- It doesn't mean they should stare at financial dashboards all day
- It means they should think, and talk using financial metrics

Because when you start talking about unit economics, this happens:

- C-levels, CEOs, founders start listening to you;
- It shapes their perception of marketing;
- "Marketing can actually help."

Finally, marketing becomes a valuable function that can contribute to top-line revenue. Finally, marketers use keywords and metrics that C-levels care about. Finally, it's not only about impressions, awareness, and MQLs.

Now the question is: how can marketing do this?

1. First, marketers should know what metrics they can impact (it should be as far as possible in the funnel but a good one is "qualified revenue pipeline")

2. Second, marketers need to know (and understand) specific unit economics of the business to do their job correctly (CAC, CAC payback, LTV, ACV).

3. Third, marketers need to be able to explain the role of secondary metrics to non-marketers for context (impressions, clicks, leads).

I created an infographic to explain the point (2).

That's how you build a revenue-first marketing function.

I help 20+ B2B businesses every week.

This is what they struggle the most with:

Trying to do everything in parallel.

- Creating content on 3 channels
- Building a big website and a complex funnel
- Launching 5 different offers for 3 audiences

It starts as "creativity". Then it becomes too hard to sustain.

Here is the 4-phase loop I see a lot:

1. Excitement to launch new projects (shiny object syndrome phase)
2. A lot of unfocused work on various tasks (unfocused phase)
3. Getting tired from the task mental load (overload phase)
4. Deep sense of underachievement (FOMO phase)

Then the loop starts again from (1).

The only way to stop it is simple:

Limit the shiny object syndrome, and stay focused on what matters.

Most of the time, the key is doing more of the simple tasks.

🎉 My newsletter crossed 33,000 subscribers!

Here are my top 3 tips to grow yours:

1. Build your newsletter like a product with a clear audience, positioning, messaging, and value proposition

Your newsletter might be free but your reader will "pay with their time". That's why you need to fix your audience problem, share pertinent insights and deliver useful information consistently.

- Audience: Who should read your newsletter?
- Positioning: How do you want to be perceived?
- Messaging: What are you going to talk about?
- Value proposition: What positive impact will you bring?

2. Increase read time, clicks, and subscriber retention with visual assets (formatting, infographics, illustrations...)

Your newsletter is competing with short social posts and dynamic videos. So you need a tactic to retain attention and deliver your messages. Turning my newsletter into a "visual asset" was my best growth factor.

- Infographics, illustrations, photos of you
- H1, H2, H3 structure to facilitate navigation
- Skimmable text with bullet points, short paragraphs

3. Plug your newsletter into your content repurposing system where 1 idea becomes 15 pieces of content

Writing a 10,000-character newsletter every week can be long and repetitive. But when it's a central piece of your repurposing workflow, it gets easier and feels worth doing.

- Combine your best social posts into a newsletter
- Cut your newsletters into 5 social posts
- Reuse the infographics you've created

I hope these tips will be useful for your newsletter!

Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

🎉 My new content bootcamp starts in April!

You'll learn my 4-step system behind 60M impressions:

1. Create your strategy for 2026 with your messaging narrative.

2. Ideate content with your unique insights and unique POV.

3. Learn to write the best hooks and copy.

4. Design your signature infographics and carousels.

And I'll teach you this system during my 5-week bootcamp.

Here's what you'll access:

- 6 Masterclasses with me to install your system
- Tailored 6-month content roadmap reviewed by me
- Help from premium writers to improve your content
- Access to my design team to review your infographics

You end the bootcamp with a system in place, a rebranded profile, branded templates, and 20 validated posts.

And above all: extreme clarity on what to post in the next 6 months.

Let's kick off 2026 with the best content strategy.

Do you want to get more information about my 5-week content creation bootcamp?

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