Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA

A handful of concrete, useful data points punctuate what is largely a product walkthrough. The observation about how advisors' technical SEO invisibility is structural rather than cosmetic is useful, but most of the episode is feature narration, not transferable operational knowledge.

“when you strip out M&A, you strip out referrals from, you know, some of the referral platforms like a Schwab, Fidelity, et cetera. You strip out additional wallet share. You strip out market growth. Organic growth in this industry is abysmal. It's, you know, two to maybe 4% on average across the board.”

“The firms who are running ads, emails, LinkedIn, and the phone are crushing it. The firms who are just doing email and LinkedIn are not.”

The individual components - SEO auditing, website visitor de-anonymization, referral methodology licensing - are well-established categories; the episode frames them as novel but offers little first-principles thinking or contrarian argument. Combining these tools for the RIA vertical is mildly differentiated but not genuinely fresh.

“advisors have been sort of sold on the idea that a website is used for credibility when people are doing research on you. Key part of that is doing research on you. But if the technical foundation is structured correctly... you can attract people who are doing research that then find you.”

“There's some- Wow. Sick things in the work, Mike, but that's the stack that we've created.”

David DeCelle is a genuine operator - co-founded Model FA, co-authored a book on organic growth, and is now building a SaaS product in a specific vertical he knows well. Credibility is real, but the interview format reduces him to a product salesperson rather than surfacing the depth of his practitioner knowledge.

“we audited 30,000 financial advisor websites. And what we found is that almost every single one of them was broken from a foundational standpoint.”

“one of the clients that we work with, we started working with them in, uh, September of 2024, that entire year, they got, uh, 30 referrals. They implemented the methodology in 2025, they got 110 referrals and they're up 300 million in AUM just from client referrals.”

This is the episode's strongest dimension; the guest consistently reaches for real numbers - visitor de-anonymization rates, pricing per module, AUM outcomes, referral counts, and a timestamped case study. The figures are specific enough to be genuinely evaluable, even if they all serve a sales narrative.

“one of our best websites that we've built was launched on March 31st. They're not running any ads. It's all organic. and they brought in 41 appointments, 15 million in AUM. They also charge a financial planning fee. And so it's a total of over 200,000 in revenue. And that was over a 60 day period.”

“the site, the SEO and convert the prospecting tool, the de-anonymization of website visitors are 500 bucks a month each. So the whole stack is 1500 bucks.”

The host asks logical follow-up questions on pricing, automation, and contract terms, but never challenges a single claim, repeatedly validates with superlatives, and explicitly positions himself as a cheerleader. The interview functions as a promotional segment rather than a substantive conversation.

“I've been in the industry for 15 years, marketing seven specifically with financial services providers and advisors. I don't, I've never seen anything like this.”

“That's scary. Use a VPI in a good way.”