Plus the one-email setup that took Steve from 0 to 170 weekly readers in a month
I've talked to hundreds of advisors this past year who think they're keeping clients calm by not reaching out about the news. They think they're saving them anxiety by not emphasizing it.
What that actually means: You're letting the worst headlines drive your clients' reality.
Your clients are not immune from the push notifications, the email alerts, the flash on CNBC as they walk by a screen, the quick hit on the Today Show or MSNBC or Fox. But that's all they get.
They see Google drops 9% and think, “That's one of the biggest companies in the world. I use it every single day. Google’s doing that badly? That can’t be good!”
They don't have the ability to be able to say, "Oh, that's not actually the company. That's just the stock, and it's dropping because investors were disappointed that this company ONLY produced tens of billions of dollars of profit."
They can't dig into the article the way you can to diffuse the anxiety the headline was designed to create. They need you for that.
I’m not saying give them a market update.
Context on the economy, their costs, their business, their borrowing rates, hiring and layoffs — these are crucial things they need to know. But they need to know what it means for them, not what it means for the market. Giving them that context diffuses the alarm.
The advisors proactively providing context become a trusted resource. The ones pretending their clients don’t think about their money every single day are missing an opportunity.
ADVISOR BRIEF: Week of July 27
Data and science to help you anticipate client questions and concerns this week
Calendar:
Q2 Earnings Season Peak, the biggest week of reports - All week
Federal Reserve Rate Decision - Wednesday, July 29
Q2 GDP - Thursday, July 30
PCE Inflation, Personal Income, Spending, and Savings - Thursday, July 30
Initial Jobless Claims - Thursday, July 30
Michigan Consumer Sentiment for July - Friday, July 31
Now, let’s break it down…
Main Conversation: "Are we headed for a recession?"
Clients only think about the economy in three tiers:
It seems good: No real questions.
It seems fine, not great: Are we headed for a recession?
Things are bad: When do they get better?
Depending on who their clients are, most advisors are sitting somewhere between two and three right now. And with GDP, PCE, the Fed, and the biggest earnings week of the quarter all landing in five days, every headline this week feeds that one question. They don't care if GDP prints 2.1 or 3.1. They're listening for one thing: is a recession coming or not?
That's the frame. Everything else this week — the Fed, the Google-stock-drops-9% headlines, the Thursday data pileup — gets processed by clients through that single question.
Biases at play:
Availability: A red flash saying a household-name stock dropped 9% is vivid and everywhere. Record profit margins across 500 companies are abstract and nowhere. Clients will weigh what they can picture over what the data says.
Narrative fallacy: Layoff announcements, a down stock, and a war headline are fragments, but clients will assemble them into one complete story, "this is how recessions start," unless someone gives them a better one.
Anchoring: Clients are anchored to what things cost before, their old mortgage rate, the old grocery bill. The Fed reacts to the rate of change in prices. Clients react to the absolute level. Both can be right at the same time, and that gap is where the anxiety lives.
What clients will ask:
"Are we headed for a recession?"
"Google dropped 9% in one day. I use them every day. That's the biggest company in the world. Isn't that a really bad sign?"
"The Fed met this week and did nothing. So when do my rates actually come down?"
"Companies keep announcing layoffs. Should I be worried about my job? My business?"
Business Owner: Every rate headline is a borrowing-cost headline: the equipment lease, the vehicle, the line of credit. They feel squeezed on margins already, so "recession coming" reads as a reason to freeze plans that were sound a month ago.
Corporate Professional: Earnings week is personal. Their company, their equity comp, their industry all get graded in public. A layoff announcement at a record-profit company still lands as "is my job next."
Retiree / Pre-Retiree: They can't read past the red flashes. A bad headline week becomes "should we be pulling back on spending," even when nothing in the plan changed.
Some more context for your meetings:
Corporate America has never been more profitable. S&P 500 profits are growing at their fastest pace since 2021, roughly 26% year over year, even setting aside Alphabet's unusual one-time gain (38% if you include GOOGL), and net profit margins are at record highs, topping even the first quarter's record. (FactSet, July 24)
This is broad, not just a big tech story. The other 493 companies in the S&P 500 are on pace for nearly 23% profit growth, their best since 2021, and all eleven sectors are growing revenue. Overall sales are growing double digits for the second straight quarter. (FactSet)
The last inflation reports were genuinely good news. June consumer prices fell 0.4%, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020, bringing annual inflation down to 3.5%. Core prices were flat on the month. Wholesale prices fell too. (BLS, July 14)
Gas is the wildcard clients feel every week. The national average hit $4.09, up 15 cents in a week as oil pushes higher on renewed Strait of Hormuz volatility. Still below May's $4.56 peak, but well above last summer's $3.14. (AAA, July 23)
The economy is growing at a perfectly normal pace. GDP grew 2.1% in the first quarter, and 2.2% for all of 2025. Thursday's Q2 estimate is expected around 2.3%. Boring, average, fine. (BEA)
The cushion underneath it is thin. The personal savings rate was 3.0% in May, one of the lowest readings of the post-pandemic era and less than half its 2019 norm. (BEA)
Small businesses are okay, but squeezed. Optimism rose in June to 97.4, near its 52-year average, yet a net 20% report declining earnings, 21% call inflation their top problem, and 38% raised prices, the most since early 2023. (NFIB, July 14)
The job market is low hire, low fire. Layoffs are historically rare: initial claims fell to 187,000 last week, the lowest since 1969. Unemployment is low at 4.2%. But hiring is slow, with just 57,000 jobs added in June. (DOL, BLS)
If a client asks you where things stand this week, you can run straight down this list.
This was one of several client conversations worth prepping this week. Share Scoops is the smart drafting platform that anticipates your clients' concerns and keeps you in front of them, without becoming a marketer or a content creator.
▶️ The rest in your free trial: Start a free trial
STEAL THIS: One email is an entire marketing funnel
One practical thing you can use in your practice, in your content, or on a call
Last week I presented to the Financial Planners’ Association on building trust at scale, and the tip that got the most follow-up questions was the simplest one in the whole hour.
One weekly note to your own network is a complete marketing funnel.
Write it as an email. Republish it as a LinkedIn newsletter, which automatically invites every one of your connections to subscribe, and keeps inviting every new connection forever. That's it. No ads, no campaigns, no dancing for the algorithm.
Steve’s an advisor in Philly.
When he went independent, he told me the hardest part was building new conversations without leads or support. So instead of chasing strangers, he started one weekly note to his own network in a 30-minute Tuesday calendar block.
His first issue: 88 subscribers, almost 10% of his network raising their hand to hear from him every week.
By week four, he was at 170, nearly double, and an old college contact had already reached out to reconnect because of it.
Stop spending all your time trying to convert strangers.
Show up consistently for the people you already know and turn them into clients.
His words: "Putting that newsletter out was way easier than getting 150 people in a room."
The 3 things I told the room:
Write one short weekly note to the people who already know you.
Turn it into a LinkedIn newsletter so your network gets invited on autopilot.
Show up every week. Trust compounds when the same people keep hearing from you.
Want a setup like Steve's?
I'm helping 20 advisors build this exact system with their email and LinkedIn in one sitting next month, starting August 3rd.
▶️ Reply to this email with “AUGUST”, and I'll give you the details.
Not marketing advice. Just what works.
See you next week,
Augustus
Augustus Christensen
Founder & CEO
