Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 198: Ideas to Implement -- Strategies to Finish What You Start and Achieve Project Success

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198: Ideas to Implement -- Strategies to Finish What You Start and Achieve Project Success · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the ideas to implement episode.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I am so glad you are here.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Each week I want to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about the action steps from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: So every week, I'm going to distill the episode down into just a couple bullet points that you can take action on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I want you to take what you've learned in the long episode and actually go do it.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Go finish, go do the thing.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm your host of the efficient advisor Libby Grywey and I built a 100% referral only planning practice from scratch that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I am here to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was all about how to actually finish those projects that you start, and the episode was inspired by or really the content of the episode was all around some of the principles from John Acuff's book Finish, give Yourself the Gift of Done.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: So if you're anything like me, I love, I'm a good project starter.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I love starting projects.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: In fact, I am exceptional at starting projects but I'm not naturally inclined to finish them.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: If you know anything about Colby, I'm a nine as a on a quick start and I am a four or three on follow-through.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'd have to look, it's low.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: It's not my favorite.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I always had to hire people to help me finish the things, but, dang, I was really good at starting them and this book was exceptional.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I really really appreciated a lot of the things that John talked about inside of the book and this book was exceptional.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I really really appreciated a lot of the things that John talked about inside of the book and I had recommended it to a couple of advisors that I was coaching and one of them came back and he was like oh, my goodness, this was the biggest gift for myself.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I'm such a Enneagram three.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I'm such an overachiever.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I'm always setting these big, huge, crazy, lofty, high goals for myself and then I don't achieve them and I get really frustrated and I feel like a loser and I, you know, and just all of the things that we do, we beat ourselves up, right, this, we've all been there, we've all done all of these things.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So in the long episode I go through John's seven principles or really seven principles that I pulled from the book of all the way through, like understanding why we fail to finish, how to properly set goals.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So I'm just going to kind of highlight I know this is a ideas to implement, so I don't want it to be a 400 million minute episode but really kind of the idea of number one understanding the problem why do we actually fail to finish?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So, before you can get to solutions, it's really kind of essential to understand the perfectionism, the fear of failure, and often it's overwhelm that prevents us from finishing, which is really kind of a crazy backwards concept, right, it's kind of counterintuitive that sometimes taking on too much can actually lead us to abandonment of projects, which is crazy, because then we're overwhelmed because the projects aren't getting done.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: But if you know, you know, you know what I mean.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: So these obstacles are particularly prevalent in in business or in financial advisory offices, because you're wearing 4,000 hats and you're doing 6,732 things all at the same time and you're task switching.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: When an email comes in or a client needs something, you're going into meetings, you're going into team meetings, you're doing planning, you're booking the kids swim lessons.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's just so many things going on.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: So principle number one is cut your goals in half.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: So go back and listen to the long episode on sort of the what, wow and hi.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: It means.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: You know it sounds like reducing your ambition, but it's really not.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It's taking those bigger goals and breaking them down into more manageable targets to increase the likelihood of success.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Right, this is one of those things for me that I had to take my big goals and break them down into super teeny, tiny goals so that I could literally start knocking them down like dominoes.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Once I started building that momentum, oh my gosh, things couldn't get in my way.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: But if I had a big, giant goal and I felt like I was barely chipping away at it, that to me was significantly more difficult and so much easier for me to abandon.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So cut your goals in half.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: We've got principle number two choose what to bomb.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: So I did an article a few years ago on warren buffett's two list system, where he's like, hey, make this list of five important priorities in your life and make a list of, like, the next 25 priorities in your life and literally crinkle up the 25 and throw them away because those are the things that are going to get you in your way, and it was just a really interesting thing.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: So he's saying, like you know, basically the same concept that John's saying choose what to bomb.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: You can't be good at 30 things.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: You can really only prioritize five, because if everything's a priority, nothing's actually a priority.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So you have to pick what it is that you're going to get really, really good at and focus your time on, and you're gonna have to prioritize those and then either delegate or just choose to suck at a few other things, all right.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Principle number three make it fun.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: If you want it done, that one is um, a pretty you know, pretty big no brainer.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: We were talking this week on our group coaching.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: We have office hours every month and we were talking about Tuesday's episode.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: So I am recording this ideas to implement.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: After we talked about the episode in our.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: It came up in our group and we were talking about making it fun and, um, I remembered something and I gosh, I was like, oh, I wish I would have mentioned this in the long episode because, um, we used to joke, you know how, like factories have a certain number of days accident free we used to have that for Nygo free Like, how many days could we go in the office without a not in good order on some paperwork?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: So again, go back to the long episode.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: You'll hear some different ways to make the work, environment, culture really fun, different things that we did in our office to kind of gamify some of our work, to make it just exciting and interesting and a place that people wanted to work and enjoyed to work.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Principle number four was get rid of your secret rules.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So these are those internal, often unspoken, sometimes spoken, uh, beliefs that sabotage your efforts.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: So things like, oh, it's a sign of weakness If I ask for help.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Or oh, I have to be available to my clients all of the time.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I have to respond to an email within 24 hours.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I have to get an application out within two business days.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Like, whatever your unspoken rules are for yourself, you have to get rid of those.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: We have to challenge assumptions.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: We have to dismantle those secret rules to create just a healthier, more productive workspace for yourself.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Number five is use data to track progress.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I get into that in the episode by actually tracking good key performing indicators, key performance indicators, kpis.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: I've got a whole episode on KPIs and how to actually, but actually using data to drive decision-making, to keep your projects on track, to motivate you through, you know, visible progress, being able actually to measure success, going based off of how you feel like instead of going based off of how you feel All right.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Principle number six you have to kill perfectionism.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: You know, get used to minimum viable product.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to encourage risk-taking inside of your office.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, perfectionism is one of the things that really, for me personally, really gets in the way.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: There's things where I'm like, oh my gosh, this is not ready yet and I just had to get over that a few years ago.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: You know what, if I post something on social media and there's a typo in it, I'm not worried about it.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And I know there are those of you who are so sweet the, you know, grammar police that love to be like, hey, it should say this instead of that hey, I love you.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I thank you for that and I'm just doing the best that I can over here.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Perfection I gave up on that a long time ago because perfection or perfect really honestly it isn't even fun.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: So killing that mentality I know I personally struggle with an all or nothing mentality.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Being able to find happy in the done is better than a perfect project sitting in your to-do box, right.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Nobody likes that.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: So, embracing that perfection it does allow for faster progress and then you can always come back.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I say this all the time but just do it crappy and come back and make it fancy later.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Just get it done, get it out into the world, get your genius into the world and then every time you touch it, you know plan to make it incrementally better.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And the last principle is make it public.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So sharing your goals, your dreams, what it is that you're doing with the people around you, so that you can develop a timeline.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: You have people holding you accountable.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: You know accountable.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Get a coach, uh, get into a study group or a mastermind.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Having people around you holding you accountable to doing what you said you were going to do is incredibly helpful.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: So I know I kind of ran through that really fast.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: But again, I try to make these episodes short and sweet, so go back to the long episode.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: You know you can look at um, some of the ways that perfectionism and minimum viable product, all of these things and all the principles that we just talked about, and how they're getting in the way of you actually moving through projects from start to finish, all the way through completion, and actually getting them done and out into the world.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And again, like if you can shoot for 80% of what you envision and then every time you touch it, make a little bit better.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh, you're going to be in such a great place.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: So I know, all of the time when we have advisors coming into the group coaching program, um, and we start building out those processes, everybody says, oh, this has been on my to-do list.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've tried to do this.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've got this little piece and that little part.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: And oh, I just it wasn't really coming together and I wasn't really sure where to store it.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And a we try to take care of all of those things and answer all of those questions in the group coaching program.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: But B the biggest encouragement is to just do it crappy and make it fancy later.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Let's just build a skeleton.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: You can always come back and add more muscles and bones and skin and make it super fleshed out and even more amazing.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: But just start and get pieces in place and start using them and once you see, oh my gosh, once you have a process built and your team can roll through it consistently without making mistakes and getting all of those like extras that you want as part of your client experience done, oh my gosh, once you start experiencing like how amazing it is to be able to delegate that and have it happen at the quality level that you want, over and over and over, with all of this consistency, you like can't help but want to build more processes and see what else can I delegate, what else can I streamline, what else can I automate?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: You know what else is not necessary, what else can I delete?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Um, what else can I template?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's just a lovely feeling.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: So anyways, my encouragement go out there and grab this book.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It's a great read.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I love John Acuff as an author.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: He is so entertaining in the way that he writes.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: You know, a personal development or a business book.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: It's fun, it's funny.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: You will enjoy it.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: It's a very quick, very easy read and you will get done with this book and feel so motivated to go really redirect your energy kind of change, the way that your goal setting and really, really focus on moving projects through completion.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Anyways, hope you guys found this to be a helpful episode.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I'd love to connect with you more over in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook or, as you know, I like to hang out on LinkedIn.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week and go finish something.