Tired of Hearing How Change Is The Only Constant In Financial Advisor Business News… Blah Blah Blah?

Business education providers want to instil this big fear that a world of rapid change needs to be your responsibility and yours alone. Call Hogwash to this! The truth is that rapid change is great news for an independent Financial Advisor firm. Embrace it. Use it to your advantage.

Would you agree that if you let excuses fester in your team’s culture, allowing common criticism of others to creep in… hearing the words “we have to change, or so-and-so needs to change!” can and will kill performance levels in your business? Criticism is contagious. It is dangerous with a capital “D.”

You certainly don’t want to be the one leading this negative culture movement. And yes! I agree it’s undoubtedly going to be harder to keep up. That’s why you must make this a team challenge to initiate a culture shift to build a team improvement system to address this rapidly changing emotional issue for all stakeholders, your staff, your JV partners, your clients and yes, especially your loved ones.

The method to make this happen will become more apparent after you gain more information from this helpful insight… please read on.

Here’s how it works: When you hear your little voice suggest that “we need to change.” Warning bells better be activated. Here’s why: if you let this infectious virus, “we need to change,” take hold, you are developing a concentrated breeding area for more complaints and cynicism throughout your firm.

The Framework: Don’t fix the blame; fix the problem. Reframe the issue.

Don’t be quick to blame the team players’ skill sets, competence, and lack of talent available to hire.

Warning Point: Contrary to what you may have heard, nine times out of ten, it’s not a people problem, but a business model that you’ve probably outgrown, or your model fails to keep abreast of the reality of changing dynamics.

Fix the problem at the core. If you’ve participated in one of our Asset CEO teaching sessions? You’ll know upfront that we address this with a list of questions to see where your business operations model is. Has it kept up and capable of handling rapidly changing dynamics? Does it allow your team to help you embrace change differently? When dealing with minor issues, do things turn into a major upheaval? We want to look for clues of where the roadblocks are. Then we can start to fix the problems by priority.

Here are some more advanced strategy questions: Are the right things being addressed to make your business remarkable because team players are not trained on how your organization functions? Is your current organization structure getting in the way of the people who will be able to fix each issue promptly, or is it because the system you are currently using have limitations?”

See what we want to do here? We empower others on our team by reframing the issue down to help us, as a group, discover what’s happening with our processes. Then we encourage inclusion to single out the ONE Action step: What ONE action step needs to happen to start a chain reaction, a domino effect, to generate a significant impact on performance-what would this ONE thing be?”

I know we’ve covered much information in this post. The questions are powerful and may be difficult to answer without the big picture of wrapping all this into a straightforward guide and making it work for you.

That’s why I have a complete detailed framework in my latest book: How To Future-Proof Your Financial Advisory Firm and Run Things Your Way.

When you get your copy of this book, you’ll see we constantly stress that you are grounded to deflect all this noise about change and use it to gain an advantage. Remind yourself of these fundamental principles:

Here’s just one page right out of my book to help you understand what gems are in it for you:

How can we take your firm from here—where it is today—to the future? Any success in your business depends on you creating a strategy that works, so constantly remind yourself of these vital fundamental principles:

1)    Your business is unique, so don’t look like everyone else’s
Your staff, clients, and vendors, no matter how good or loyal they are, only care about one thing: how will this affect them? Need proof? If you use an outside agency to do your marketing—maybe they built your website or designed all your marketing collateral—go onto their website. Look at the other websites they’ve created for wealth management firms. How similar do they look? If you switched out the logo on your website and your photos for one of their other clients in your industry, is there much difference between that one and yours?

2)    Strive for excellence
Everything can be improved. This is a mantra used by big profitable businesses every day. Always be on the lookout for areas of your business that need improvement.

3)    What do you want out of your business?
You must be clear about your objective. Are you looking to generate more income? A steady retirement-like income stream? Do you want to build an asset you can sell? Do you want a business that can run without your day-to-day involvement? …Setting you up to have more time for yourself and your family?

Are you ready to get your GPS?

Chapter 5

YOUR GPS - A SIMPLE 4-STEP METHODOLOGY TO TAKE YOU FROM HERE TO THERE

(TRANSITIONING YOUR FIRM TO RUN THE ASSET CEO WAY)

If you like to learn, grab your copy of this book to prepare for the future. Tomorrow’s financial advisory firm will be agile, fast, and client-centric like never before. It will run circles around its more prominent competitors in the process. Discover ways to meet client requirements through your business, and you will prosper at a level you’ve never thought was possible.

All right. It’s your turn. Get this working for you and make a difference.

Make it a great day!