Speaker 1:

From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business.

For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now, let's go inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glinn.

Lance Glinn:

Marketing is no longer a sidekick in wealth management. It's taking center stage as a powerful driver of growth. With clients demanding more personalization, transparency, and digital connection, firms are evolving how they tell their stories and build lasting trust. Today's most effective advisors don't just manage money, they manage their message, becoming authentic brand builders across platforms.

Our guest today, Jordan Awoye, founder and managing partner of Awoye Capital, is at the forefront of this shift. As part of Marketing Week here on the podcast, Jordan shares how he's blending financial expertise with marketing savvy to create a brand that resonates and how the broader industry is using marketing as a key to unlock deeper relationships and sustainable growth.

Jordan, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House.

Jordan Awoye:

Yes, yes. Pleasure to be here.

Lance Glinn:

So you were at Cannes Lions this year, a major event for anyone in the creative and marketing world. Just what stood out to you from the event, whether those highlights were specific activations, panels, or just overall takeaways from your time in France?

Jordan Awoye:

So first and foremost, just how beautiful France is, right? Before I could even talk about the event itself, just the location was perfectly picked. And for me it was the duality of work, the intentionality of everybody there. You know they were there for something. They came for a relationship, a deal, whatever the case may be. But on the opposing end, being able to have fun and getting to see people not as stiff as you can imagine that we're used to. And being able to enjoy Cannes. So, so much amazing events from, of course, the Stock Exchange, being with the Wall Street Journal in the Journal House to Sports Beach and a couple of places in between. But I just love seeing people be able to get the work done, but also enjoy the geography of France.

Lance Glinn:

And correct me if I'm wrong, you got the chance to travel outside of the country as well, take advantage of the ease and convenience that is going from country to country in Europe.

Jordan Awoye:

Yes, yes. Being in Europe, it's hard to pass that down. So after Cannes, was able to take a couple extra days and some friends, partners, and I, we went to St. Tropez, Ibiza, Amalfi Coast, it's just a couple places [inaudible 00:03:07]-

Lance Glinn:

Take advantage when you're there. Take advantage. So in 2019, you founded Awoye Capital, a wealth management firm with a mission to financially educate and empower as many as possible. When you're at a festival like Cannes, how do you absorb the energy that's surrounding and that's around you, and the insights that you hear, or the opinions and thoughts that you hear from leaders and bring it back into the wealth management space?

Jordan Awoye:

Amazing question. So for me it's the authenticity behind it, because you're having genuine conversations. And as you can imagine being in those types of spaces, it's not a lot of pitching in terms of transactional conversation. It's more intentional to where you're listening, you're more than likely going to see these people on a regular basis.

So for me, being able to see the insights of what a lot of brands and companies are actually looking for, the commonality in regards to the conversation. Because you'll notice particular companies and brands in a sector are looking to do X, Y, and Z. So for me, information is one of the most powerful currencies in the world. So if I understand what drives you, what you're looking for, then I could always tailor what we're talking about.

So biggest takeaway some of the experience wise was being able to hear a little bit more behind the curtains of the things that matters for industries and brands that's not in finance. And for Awoye Capital, we run more as an agency in regards to we do a lot more than just manage money. So whether it's trying to negotiate a brand, or helping with a non-profit and just connecting to other people. And sometimes it's stepping away and letting them flourish without you, that was a big thing for me to be able to speak outside of finance and build some nice relationships.

Lance Glinn:

So the world of finance, though, hasn't always been quick to embrace marketing, right?

Jordan Awoye:

Yes yes.

Lance Glinn:

At least not in the creative or the brand driven way that we are now seeing. How have you approached using marketing, not just to promote your own firm but to build relationships and just overall educate the audience that you have?

Jordan Awoye:

Amazing question. Because the financial industry is a little antiquated in regards to coming around relative to social media, storytelling content. So as an independent firm, that's one of the most important pillars of our business. So it starts with the just relationship authenticity. And I'll lean into that world because before I could talk about the other elements, such as storytelling and content and things, that's pretty obvious. You have to do your job and do it well. And more importantly, be a good person because the word of mark-of-mouth marketing travels a lot faster than a pitcher can sometimes.

So for us, we've been building it brick by brick, been in the space close to 10 years now, done amazing work whether it's before we started our firm to of course present day, and we still have a lot of the same relationships. So the referral market is amazing for us. And then on the bigger level, for my colleagues and just other business owners, you'll be so surprised how much marketing plays into it. Until we started to take marketing serious, regardless of our skill set and what we can offer, the business took a whole nother leap because of storytelling, because of letting people in. A lot of times, and I struggled with it initially years ago before going into being fully independent and starting to market a little bit more intentionally, and we still have a ways to go on that front.

But in our industry it's two plus two equals four. You do your job, you do it well, you don't necessarily need to do the alternative. But you'll realize that people want to feel involved. People want to know who you are, what does your company, your firm stand for? And being able to tell an intentional story around that is powerful.

So for us, first it just started with relationships, doing our job well, treating people the way you want to be treated. But then outside of that, who are we? What do we do? So creating content around that. But not just financial content because during the 2020 pandemic, we did a lot of educational content. We have a financial literacy curriculum, we taught and we led with education first. Because one of my favorite quotes that we've all heard, but it rings so powerful for me, is, "Teach a man to fish, or give a man a fish."

So for us, we'll do the work for you, of course. That's our jobs. But ultimately we want to teach you how to do it because that's where legacy comes in. And it makes our job easier in the long term. The more financially literate a client is, it's easier to manage money and build with them for the long haul. So we led with that and the transparency behind it. It built positive human capital and just continue to deposit into that bucket. And before you know it, your name rings true, the storytelling. Then we also toured the country teaching and speaking. We've been to 20-plus universities, sports teams, prison systems, just teaching money from the most purest place possible.

So when you start to merge all that together, a couple of cool podcasts like the ICE House, the storytelling stuff to do what it needs to do on its own.

Lance Glinn:

And I think it speaks just overall to building a brand, right? That's ultimately what you tried to do and have been successful at building a brand both for your firm as well as your own personal brand too.

So just what was your mindset? Take us back to those days of that building. What was your overall mindset when you first started shaping both your personal brand and the Awoye Capital brand? And how has that evolved as both you and the firm have grown?

Jordan Awoye:

So mindset was just like when I played basketball, playing basketball at the college level. Everything's about competition and attention to detail. So starting to create our name and who we are, I pay very attention to the things that you may think is irrelevant, such as that trivial post or just even coming out, we talked about 4th of July hanging out. And it may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but the way you carry yourself off the court, off the camera, not in a boardroom, that matters also.

So when I started, I wasn't originally a finance person. So for me it was doing the internal work, making sure that exactly who I'm saying, exactly who I'm presenting is exactly who I am, and then making sure that everything adds up, right? We're good at what we do, this isn't a facade, this is something that's true to my core. So I became finance, I became Awoye Capital. I love the business. I, again, treated it just like basketball, which is my first, first, first love, where this became literally 1A to 1B, and I go at with the same intensity.

So that was the mindset initially was the purity and the intentionality and just the athlete's mentality is a big deal for me. And the way that's evolved is still true to our core because I believe playing sports is such an amazing conduit for every other industry, whether it's teaching you discipline, teamwork, accountability, being able to fail and get back up and try again, so we keep that at our core. But now it's more working smarter, not harder, right? Before I tried a lot, I missed on a lot, I made a couple shots, but now for me it's doubling down on the things that works, efficiency, what's the best use of our time. And if it works and it's not broke, don't fix it. So that's the transition as we continue to evolve and look to the future.

Lance Glinn:

Now, I want to bring back a word that you used quite often earlier in our conversation, that's authentic and authenticity. I mean, there's so much talk about authenticity in marketing these days, bringing out your true self, bring out a brand's true identity. And in a high-trust industry like wealth management and what you do on a daily basis with Awoye Capital, what does that word trust really mean to you? And how do you ensure your message comes across as real rather than overly polished and corporate?

Jordan Awoye:

Amazing. So humans, we're emotional creatures at our core. So trust, if you could imagine this is how do you make people feel? That's just the way I break it down as simply as possible. When we manage money, we're talking about stocks, bonds, alphas, betas, things like that. But to the people outside of our business, that's not what they see. They see peace of mind in terms of having a retirement account. They see safety when they go to bed, and if something happens to their partner or their kids, they have insurance. Or they see the fact that maybe one day they'll be able to do something amazing for the person that they love, like their mother or their grandmother. So it's the emotional context before the numbers in terms of trust.

So for us, we bring it back to the most basic level. Can you connect on a person-to-person basis? Really listen see what somebody's fearful about, what they get excited about? Actually, one of my mentors when I just started in the business said, vice versa, because he forced us to hold clients accountable too, in terms of don't just take everybody as a client and I learned that the hard way. Because you're excited, but then you learn probably not the best fit.

But as for clients, as for advisors, if you wouldn't invite that person to your home to the barbecue or have them around your kids, don't do business with them, first of all. So that's the way I conduct myself. Before we talk about your money, do I want to be around you? Do you want to be around me? Do we have some commonality in in terms of just being friends or at least treating each other with the utmost amount of respect and transparency? And once we have that, the rest is history. So in terms of authentic, I think it's rooted in that.

Lance Glinn:

And I speak to a lot of CEOs on the podcast, and oftentimes we bring up M&A. And I say how an acquisition on paper could look great, but while that might look great just looking at numbers in a spreadsheet, it could look completely different if you go to that business and the culture doesn't fit. So it's like the same thing, right? If a client on paper could look great, you could see all these numbers, you could see a spreadsheet, you could say, "Man, I want this person as a client." But then when you actually meet them face to face and you have a conversation with them and you see their true personality, you might soon realize that, hey, just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good. So I do think there's a little bit of a connection there.

And on the topic just of messaging as a whole, specifically in wealth management, there's I think a lot of sameness in what is said. Even if the copy is different, the messages that firms portray to clients I think stay relatively similar to those others that are pitching their own brand as well. So for you, how do you approach brand differentiation in a space where everyone's promising a lot of the same things, like trust, expertise, and ultimately results?

Jordan Awoye:

Lean into who I am, to be frank. Within this space, there's not a lot of me, right? From background being an athlete, demographic wise, so not going out my way to try to be something that I'm not. Because at the end of the day, I'm not going to manage all the money in the world. Not everybody under the sun is going to be a client. But there's the right people that fit perfectly for us and our mission and what we strive to do as a firm will ring true to them.

So I usually don't go out my way to really differentiate outside of services. I will say that, right? So for us, being in the financial space before I fully went independent, I'm a learner. I love to learn. I'm the guy up at midnight researching and reading just because. And you'll learn, as you know we have wire houses, we have insurance, we have financial planning, we have M&A, we have private markets, we have investment banking, and we have hedge funds, everything along the sort. So a lot of times people group finances together in terms of the different verticals under finance. But if unless you're in the space, you know how ridiculously different each thing is.

So for us, we wanted to make sure that we had as much services in-house as possible to make sure we're as value added to our clients as possible. So if anything, we try to differentiate ourselves in regards to service and quality because now instead of being a place that only does insurance only does private placements or private deals or banking, raising capital, whatever the case is, we have a multitude of services. And if we don't do it, our partners in-house do it. So when somebody stops and talks to Warrior Capital, you're getting about at least 90% of what the financial world has to offer in-house. So we really treat it like an agency model.

And I run Awoye Capital kind like a sports franchise. You have the players, the coaches, everybody plays a role, company culture. My role may be to do A, B, and C, and somebody else on the team does X, Y, Z, and they do it way better than me. So that's the biggest differentiator that we try to focus on is: does our services and products speaks better than the competition? Or at least fits ideal for our clients better than the competition?

Lance Glinn:

And that versatility. When you think back to 2019, that was always the goal for Awoye Capital, to be that multifaceted firm that, like you said, doesn't just cover one, but covers many?

Jordan Awoye:

Yes and no. Yes and no. And the reason I say it that way is when I initially left my prior firm, kudos to them, have so much love and respect for them, learn so much. I love the system. I love what they built. But as everything, it has a couple holes.

So leaving was, if I could keep this and add that and remove this and I add that, then I would have the perfect firm. So initially when I left, it was to maximize what I know in the interim. But then also we're always learning, still learning to this day. There was a lot I did not know in terms of what went well, what fit well, what does our clients look for in this particular market that we're trying to serve now? So we had X and I thought it would look like Y. And as you continue to grow a year or two later, it looks like Z. S.

O I would say we're maybe, from the original thought of Awoye Capital, we're probably 60% of the core. And then added that extra 40% as you learn.

Lance Glinn:

So at the end of the day, we've talked a lot about marketing and branding. No matter the space you're in, though, marketing and branding are just tools. You must use them correctly or else what's the point, frankly, in using them at all?

So how do you measure success when it comes to both your own brand and your firm's brand's impact and justify to yourself that you are using these tools correctly?

Jordan Awoye:

It's changed. It's definitely changed, and it's still changing because initially it was about quantity. How much reach can we get? How widespreading can we get the content or the message or even the education from the education platform that we have, or speaking gigs, or things of that nature? Now it's the impact. Now it's the impact, because having a professional tell me that the words of what I did for their business changed their lives, or leaving a university or sports team and seeing the kids look at you like, "Wow, I did not know that. I'm going to implement that and tell that to my mother and my father," and things like that.

And then also, if I knew then what I know now, being an athlete that walked in their shoes and built it brick by brick and had a lot of trial and error in the interim, I wish somebody told me some of these things that I could have, you know, didn't get a couple of these bumps and bruises. So coming to them from a position of I've been there and being able to build that authentic and grassroots relationship is big for me.

So at this stage of the game, I would say impact. But as we continue to evolve we're looking to scale. So for me, it's emerging to two as we continue to hit the next level, which is how can we scale but not lose the true nature of what we're building in the scaling process?

Lance Glinn:

And to wrap up our conversation, Jordan, looking to that future, not just from a marketing or branding perspective, but from a more holistic approach, how are you plotting Awoye's Capital's future to build off the success that you've already achieved since its founding in 2019?

Jordan Awoye:

One step at a time. So we've broken into amazing markets from the sports market to founders, CEOs, everything in between. We manage money, we do full-scale service, but we're also in the private space in terms of private deals, credit, the whole nine. And then also managing their philanthropy. So for me, it's doing a lot better what we already have in-house and really doubling down on who we are as a firm. So going forward, I'm not trying to change anything, to be frank right now. I love where we are. We have a long way to go in front of us. So it's really just tripling down on the things that we know best and really telling a story that reflects who we are in the best way.

Lance Glinn:

Well, Jordan, I appreciate your insights, your thoughts, and this informative conversation. Thanks so much for joining me, the ICE House.

Jordan Awoye:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Lance.

Speaker 1:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on @icehousepodcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week, inside the ICE House.

Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.