Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 220: Ideas to Implement - When Part of Your Business is a Mess

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220: Ideas to Implement - When Part of Your Business is a Mess · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey gang, welcome back.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: As you know, every week I want to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about just the action steps from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: So my goal every week is just to take the longer episode from Tuesday and distill it down into a couple of doable bullet points right, the things that the tangible takeaways that we can act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I am your host of the efficient advisor Libby Grywe, and I built from scratch a 100% referral only planning practice 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 to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel obsessed human.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: But I'm 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 out of the way, advisor ADD, and get over exhaustion.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you loved.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So this week the episode was all about what to do when part of your business is a mess and really the big objective here, right to A normalize the fact that having a messy part of your business is completely normal.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: We often kind of sweep it under the rug.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to talk about it and I can share with you having coached you know almost a thousand advisors in the last decade that everybody has a messy part of their business.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Whether you have $200,000 in revenue or $2 million in revenue, every single one of us has that messy part.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It's natural and it's really it's an essential part of growing a successful business.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Right, you have to hit new levels and with new levels come new devils, and the systems and processes that got you here are not going to be the systems and processes that get you there All right.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So, a we're normalizing it.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: B we're talking about where it comes from and what to do about it.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: So in the episode we talk about the paralyzing trap that is overthinking.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: We talk about just the reality of messiness.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I give a bunch of examples from my own personal business of just moving forward, doing it messy, um, having areas that are not in alignment with your big vision and really, at the end of the day, what matters and what doesn't matter?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to get away from this idea of that You're perfect, it was going to be perfect, you're perfect, wasn't going to be perfect anyways.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So, putting a first iteration of something out there and doing it messy is doing it, and it's that action that is the antidote to chaos, to overwhelm, to inaction, right, so we have to take action in the face of imperfection, and I talked a little bit about some strategies that you can do to that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Right, like breaking down tasks into what I called the laughably small 10 minute tasks, and how you can move forward on one, two or three of those every single day.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And you know, just walking through, how you get into that messy position and what to do about it.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So, right, like most of us, most of the advisors listening have had that point in their business where they've just been plowing forward, right, just making it happen, and all of a sudden you step back and go oh my gosh, I have just literally been plowing forward building a business Like I need to clean some stuff up.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Right, I've been so focused on just growing that I haven't been able to take the time to back up and undo some of the mess, and it's totally, totally normal.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: So here are three actionable takeaways for you.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, number one just identify, acknowledge it, call it out, pick your one messy area that you want to tackle first.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Right, I want to just encourage you to take a moment to reflect on your business.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: A CEO day is the perfect time to do that.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Reflection and process should be part of your CEO day, and that's something I do plan on getting more into in some future upcoming episodes.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I have some exciting stuff that we're working on around helping you execute CEO days, but we want to just pick that one process, that one area of your business that feels particularly messy or a little unfinished and, like I said, whether it's outdated process, a half-finished marketing plan, you know, and a cluttered onboarding system that's just not working and just commit to improving just that one area and doing a little bit each week, building out some 10 minute tasks, some goal posts, right, like along the way of hey, these are the three, four things that need to happen in order to knock down this goal, and it just doesn't have to be perfect.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: It just has to be even incrementally better than it was before, right, if you can improve something by 10% and then come back and improve it by 10% again, right.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: You don't have to go from zero to a hundred, okay.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: The second actionable item a way to handle the messy part of your business is just to take the next step.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: So we I mentioned it before and in the longer episode get a little bit more into it.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: But action, just doing something, taking that one first step to choose one small action that you can move on today to move your business forward.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: So it could just be sending an email, having a hard conversation with a team member, making a call, implementing some tiny change inside of your workflow, right.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The key is to stop overthinking it and just start doing something.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And you don't have to think about you know, 10 years from now, five years from now, two months from now.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: You don't have to know what the finish line looks like.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: You just literally have to take that right next step.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And I always talk about I don't know.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I feel like everybody can kind of relate to this.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: If you want to lose 10 pounds, right, you don't just set out to lose 10 pounds.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: You have to lose the first pound first and then you lose the second pound.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Second.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: So your goals need to be so much tinier because if the goal is to lose 10 pounds and you've lost three, right, you're still so far away from that finish line that it feels like you're yeah, you're making progress, but it's so far away.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Versus if you change the goal, right, cut the goal down, like my goal is to lose one pound Great, you've met that goal.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: My goal is to lose one pound Great, you met that goal.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: My goal is to lose Like now, you've met three goals, as opposed to just being 30% of the way towards one goal.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So just taking that one right.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Next step breaking those tasks down into teeny tiny pieces and just taking some action.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: And one of the best ways to do that kind of the third takeaway here one of the best ways to do that is to set a time for imperfect action, so actually setting time aside on your calendar every week to working on the business, and you could even call it imperfect action time, right, this could be just a 30 minute block where you work on some tasks that you've been putting off because you know you're waiting for the perfect time, or you're waiting for the perfect inspiration, and by regularly taking imperfect action you will start to build momentum and make consistent progress.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So moral of the story is bless and release, just do it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And if it's not perfect, that's okay, bless it, release it and move on to the next step.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: You can always, always come back and fine tune something, add more meat and potatoes to it, but this is your permission to do it messy and come back and make it fancy later.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: And this episode, you know I wasn't even this, wasn't even on the content calendar.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But I had a really great conversation with one of the guys in our group coaching program.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It started back in January, right, so we're what, nine months into it now?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: And he told me like one of the most helpful things for him has been that constant, you know reiteration of that right.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Like hey, just do it messy, just do it messy, don't overthink it, it doesn't have to be perfect, just do it messy.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And that was the thing that you know he said has really helped him to actually just move forward and take a ton of action and actually like start setting these goals up and knocking them down is just by taking that imperfect action, doing it messy, just doing something.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: And I heard somewhere recently and I was like, oh, that's really great.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And it was talking about working out and I was talking about how, like, people struggle with all or nothing mentalities and the woman was making the argument to adopt a all or something instead of nothing.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Something is better than nothing, right?
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: And I know for, like in my own life, right, sometimes I try to take a 25 minute walk every single morning in the morning, sunshine, and, um, you know, sometimes when I'm like, oh, I don't have enough time, I only have 15 minutes, so it's like, oh, I can't do my 25 minute walk that I planned, so I just wouldn't do it at all, right, and so I've tried to adopt this all or something mentality where, hey, you know, 15 minutes is better than zero and you know, I can always find 10 minutes later in the day to come back and make it up and even if I don't, even if I don't, I'll certainly be glad that I did 15 as opposed to zero.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I hope that was helpful for you guys.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I hope this episode gave you permission to just bless and release, to do it messy, and I would love to talk with you more about this out in the efficient advisor community over on Facebook.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: It's a free community that you can join for just advisors and operations, people within advisory practices and we chat all things like process system, action items, things to do in your business to make it more efficient, to make it better, faster, smarter, cheaper, easier all the good stuff.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I'm also a big fan of LinkedIn.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: That's where I hang out, so you can always DM me and I would love to connect with you more there.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you, guys, so much, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you.