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148: Five Strategies I Used to Work 25 Hours a Week · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Since this podcast has just gone crazy.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Thanks to you all, we are now one of the top podcasts for financial planners and I cannot say thank you enough.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: We have thousands of new weekly listeners.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to take a minute and reintroduce myself, share my story and share five of the key things that I did to go from working that 80 hours a week in the beginning of my career down to just 25 hours a week, without sacrificing revenue and while maintaining my sanity, if not actually gaining maybe a little bit more sanity in the process.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: And the best part, anyone can implement any of these five things at any time, except for hiring a small but mighty team.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: The rest is really accessible to any advisor at any point on any budget.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: But before I jump into that, I just want to let you know that the Family Tree template from last week's episode, episode number 145, is now available.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: I heard you loud and clear.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I was laughing.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Thank you all so much for your emails and for your direct messages, and we decided to make the template available.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Normally that's something I reserve for coaching clients, but why not raise money for St Jude?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So you are now able to purchase that template with a St Jude donation of at least $15.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You can find the link to the template in my show notes and the email that I sent last week, or on my LinkedIn or in the Efficient Advisor community.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I'm going to find a home for it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: It's not yet out on the website, but I will find a home for it on the website and make it available there too.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So all of the proceeds will go to St Jude and that will stand in perpetuity.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So, regardless of when you listen to these episodes, you can go ahead and download it and get a copy.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I heard you.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It seems so easy to just create your own, but it takes time, right, and it's hard to find one that you like when you Google it.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: And I was dying because when I was talking about it on the episode, I thought oh, this is just such a simple thing.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: People will go make it, and I can't tell you how proud of you I am.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: There are so many advisors out there who are so much smarter than I was when I was starting and building my business that they're like hey, even if it takes me an hour of my time to find one, modify it, save it, I might as well just spend the 15 bucks.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It goes to a good cause and just, I'm so proud of you for buying back your time, which I'm sure we're gonna get into later in this episode.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: But, yay you, you're right.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It's cheaper and easier than creating it yourself or paying someone on your team to do it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, enough of me rambling, let's get into the five strategies that I use to cut my hours down from 80 to just 25.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Let's go.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Look.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I know you're here because you know it's possible to have leftover energy for your family and still have your dream business.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: You know the business that you are running instead of it running you.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: If you're new to the Efficient Advisor, welcome.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Griewy.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to share my story with you today on how I started, built and sold by age 37, 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.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: 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.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way overwhelm.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: So if I told you, in just one or so years from now, that you could triple your hourly rate, become a 100% referral-only planning practice and, at the same time, reduce your working hours by half, would you think I was crazy?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: There was a time when I thought those things couldn't coexist and that it would be totally crazy.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And what I've really learned over the last nearly two decades in this business is that it's not only possible, but it's totally attainable for any advisor at any tenure, in any geographic location, serving any demographic of client under any compensation structure right?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So let me explain.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I wanna take you back to 2008.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, sure, 2008, the market was very scary, but something much, much scarier happened to me.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: I found out I was pregnant, and this was really great news because my husband and I had really wanted a baby.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: But this was really scary because for those previous four years so from 2004 to 2008, I had been working around the clock like a mad woman building my business.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: You know, nights, weekends, whatever people wanted, I was there.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I was your girl and maybe that sounds familiar to you and I just remember thinking I cannot have a baby and work like this.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: But I was also just really happy with the income that I was making.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to sacrifice either, and I just remember I didn't know to do, I was exhausted, I was stressed and I can remember looking at my husband and saying, you know, gosh, I need to figure this out or I'm just gonna quit.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: And I remember him looking at me and saying, like, figure what out.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And I was like I really need to figure out how to make the same amount of money but cut the amount of time that I'm spending in my office by at least half.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I did not want to be that mom that was tethered to her phone during soccer games and checking email and putting out fires all week and long.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I really wanted to be fully present in my kid's life and really fully present in my own life.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I had built this really big, successful financial planning practice, but I didn't really have a business and you know what I'm talking about the kind with systems and processes and an actual strategy.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a business.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I had a Libby, meaning if Libby didn't show up, stuff didn't get done if Libby wasn't there.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Things and projects were not progressing forward.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a business, a self-managing, mostly running without me business.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I had a Libby.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So I recognize that this was my issue and then fast forward a couple of years in Really, just a couple years after that first pregnancy, back in 2008, I more than tripled the amount of money that I made per hour.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: We became a 100% referral only planning practice and I grew to a seven-figure firm with a super small staff.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: There was me, a full-time director of operations and two part-time staff people, one front office, one back office and the crazy part was I only was working 25 hours a week.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, you heard that right, I was producing a million dollars, but working part-time.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: My nights and weekends were spent with family and friends and I had this time to myself, which was like shocking to me, and I didn't spend time and energy and money on marketing.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And since my expenses were really low, I actually got to keep a lot of what I made, which was really cool.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And when I really think about it, the crazy part wasn't actually that I was working 25 hours a week, it was that I was turning down new clients and sending them to another advisor 2004.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Libby would have Literally died if I told her that there were people with a heartbeat and a checkbook and that she would be turning them away so that she could be working with her ideal client.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Look, and before you come at me with the well, I don't want to work part-time.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I love my job.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I get that, okay, I totally get that.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But I challenge you today to think about this through the lens of less stress and less overwhelm.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: And hey look, if you're going to be in the office doing the work, you might as well be making way more money in the amount of time that you are putting in that whole.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: You know I tripled the amount of revenue that I was making per hour thing.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Right, I work with a lot of advisors and a lot of teams that are just running around like chickens with their head cut off, and A big part of this is creating a work environment that you feel good walking into every single day, regardless of the number of hours that you're wanting to work.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: So if you're wondering, you know kind of what changed over those couple of years.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It's not like I all of a sudden learned anything or grew these crazy superpowers.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: It was mainly.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: You know it was a lot of things, but we're gonna kind of dive into the five key changes or things that I really think made a big impact on the ability to work significantly less and significantly more effective and efficiently in the time that I was putting in.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And it's interesting to me as I'm sort of reiterating this business, the efficient advisor business.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I started this business back in 2014 because my broker dealer at the time had me, you know, kind of trotting me around the country going oh my gosh, we have this advisor who's, you know, young and female, and she's making a ton of money and she's working part-time.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And that was really, really interesting to people and they wanted to hire more women and they were looking to hire younger advisors.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: And so I was out and about all of the country speaking and advisors were saying to me like, oh my gosh, this is what I needed, right, this is.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I need these systems, I need these processes and I don't want to have to start from a scratch, I don't want to have to recreate the wheel.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And that's really when I realized like, oh, all of this stuff that I have kind of developed or stumbled on In my effort to streamline my business Was stuff that was actually really, really helpful to people.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So back in 2014, I formalized my processes and started the efficient advisor and Then I was running it alongside my financial planning practice that I sold in 2019 and then took a two-year sabbatical from both businesses and I restarted this business the efficient advisor back at the very tail end, and I'm talking December of 2021.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I was in really the beginning stages of a just Moral to your divorce process, which I have really never, never, publicly talked about.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So, yay, here we are.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: This is just going to be a Vulnerable episode here.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So when we launched this last round of group coaching back in August, I was like, yes, I am going to do all of this stuff right, all of these things that I practice and preach.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do this along side my advisors who are going through this program, because my life has literally Totally changed in the last couple of years and I need to revisit all of the fundamentals and all of these things in this business.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So, literally all of the things that we're going through in the group coaching program, I am doing it right alongside them with this business and I want to streamline and I want to scale, and I am using the same methods and strategies that worked for me before and have worked for the hundreds and hundreds of advisors that I have Coached, and it is so good for me to be doing this alongside of them.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: What I'm doing might look slightly different, but really the same principles apply.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So I am in it with them, and this is all super top of mind right now, in the perfect time to just kind of share it all again.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So I want to be uber clear when I say this this is not effortless for me Any of those advisors out there who've built a business that you very much admire.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: It's not effortless for them either.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I like to be super transparent that this is hard, hard work for me too building systems and processes, nitching down, sticking to model weeks, putting in the time and space and energy and effort to revamp your processes or maybe even just initially create your processes so that you can work more efficiently down the road.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: It's no joke, right?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: It is not easy and it's work that is never going to be totally done.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So, even though you'll build up processes and you'll memorialize them, it's just Going to be ongoing work, because there's always going to be something New.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: You are stepping out of that advisor role and into the role as CEO of your business, and there will always be areas that you'll want to be continually Improving and you want to right.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: You want to be intentional.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So let's just keep in mind that you don't have to go through a major life change, like a baby or a divorce, to revamp your business.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: You get to do it whenever you want, for whatever Reason you want.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: The beautiful thing about life is that you can reinvent yourself at any moment.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: All it takes is the decision to do it and some action.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: None of this is an accident.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: It's really just reverse engineering what you want and then putting in the work to incrementally get there and again, you're not doing it all at once.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I say incrementally, intentionally, because it's something you do slowly, over time, step by step, effort pushed in the right direction.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: That's how we'll get there.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's let's dive into five of the strategies that I used to Dramatically streamline my business.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I mentioned that we started the efficient advisor back in 2014 and it started off from, like I said, I was going around and I was giving keynotes, I was doing presentations to different regions within my broker dealer and and advisors started kind of coming to me and saying, oh my gosh, how did you do that?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Can you give me that thing?
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Can you help me do that too?
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: I Want to be more present for my family.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I want to work less.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I want to feel less overwhelmed.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: You know kind of all the things.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So we started Coaching and some of you might remember the efficient advisor back when it was a video show, and some of those videos Do live out on the efficient advisor comm so you can check those out too.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that we did then was we were doing all of this coaching and again, right, how can we scale this?
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: How can we reach more people?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: How can we help more people?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: My team and I started hosting a live two-day workshop where advisors from all of the country would fly in and my team and I would train them on our systems and processes for this two-day period.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And it was such a blast and I can remember when we were sitting down to come up with the content for the workshop.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: It was Like, okay, if we had a month with advisors, what would be all of the things that we would teach them?
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: And let me tell you what I wish.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I would have had a month with everybody, and that's kind of where this podcast came from.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It's over time.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Hopefully, if you're a weekly listener, we will have spent a month together at some point.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: But we started out thinking like very big, like okay, if we had a month, what would be all of the things that we'd want to teach somebody?
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: And the list was very, very, very long.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And Then we kind of whittled it down and we're like, okay, what if we only had two weeks with all of these advisors and their teams?
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: What would be the key things that we would teach them?
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And then what if we only had one week?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: What if we had five days?
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: What if we had three days?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: What if we had two days?
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: And then we kind of kept going beyond that, right as I was working up new keynotes and we were doing, you know, three hour workshops, like if I only had three hours, if I only had two hours, if I only had one hour, and when we are boiling down our systems and really getting to the core of how did I get to a place where I shaved somewhere between 45 and 55 hours a week out of my schedule and increased my productivity, increased my revenue and dramatically increased our client experience.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: It really boiled down to a couple of things, and the one that I talk about ad nauseam is this idea of having a model year, a model quarter, a model month, a model week or a model day.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I don't care how you, you know, chunk that down, you do you, but this is the thing for me that made the most dramatic difference, and there is an entire episode and I think it's like an hour long.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: It's episode number 12, but in its long because there's so much that goes into designing your perfect week.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: But I just wanna talk about you spending time to build the week that you want, not the week that you currently have.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Like tracking your time is part of it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: We're gonna start there and understanding where you spend your time, how your time is spent, how much time do certain types of tasks and projects take, where is your energy, all of the things.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: But really getting your arms around your model week or I've heard it referred to as an ideal week is crazy, crazy critical, and I like to start globally, like a little bit more macro at.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: What does an ideal calendar year look like?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: What are some of the natural ebbs and flows of your business, what is going on in your own life or in the lives of your clients.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So for me as a mom, you know, when my kids were home over the summer, whoo, it was hard for me to do a lot of work, it was hard to do big projects with heavy lifting.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I wanted to have lighter months in the summer and then come August, when my kids were back in school, it was like, oh, you know, I love my children but, praise the Lord, they're back in school.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to focus on my business.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: So I came into August, in October, you know, I kind of August through October with so much energy and then come November, december, that energy really started to deplete because we were getting into the holiday season and the oh so 5,000 things that go along with that.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Then, holiday season, kids are home over Christmas break, praise the Lord, they go back to school in the beginning of January and I'm one of those people.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: So this is just a natural Libby energy rhythm thing, but I'm one of those people that is like new year, new you, new me.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Let's do all the business planning, let's put all the ideas, let's do literally all the things right.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I have 5,672 new year's resolutions, like all the goals I want to accomplish this year.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: So January, february, march, major major energy months for me.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Then again wrapping up tail end of the school year, my energy started to slow down and if you're a parent, just like May, just as a no for everything, may as a no.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: May is, as a mom, at least for me, one of the craziest months in the year.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: And so just kind of having a general idea, or let's say you serve snowbirds and most of your clients are gone over the winter, you know what the natural rhythms of your own family life and the lives of your employees, and then what your clients natural rhythms are.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And so looking first at a macro level and saying, okay, so we're gonna save high energy, highly customized, let's say, you do surge schedule.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: You're gonna wanna do that in my example here.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: You're gonna wanna do that August, september, january, february, right, when all the energy was high and you had all the things.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna wanna do big, hairy, heavy lifting projects when your natural energy is low or when the kids are home from school.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: So that being thoughtful, kind of at a macro level, about what your calendar looks like, and then kind of chunking that down into quarterly, maybe it's monthly, but then getting down into what I call a model week.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And my model week has literally, like I said, if I could teach one thing to people, model week is it.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: This is the thing that saved me, got me hyper organized.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I am naturally I'm an Enneagram seven.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Being hyper organized is not my thing.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Structure is not my natural default.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I much, much, much prefer free flowing, kind of wherever my brain takes me.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I also have ADD, so I like love going just kind of wherever the wind blows.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And while that's part of the charm, right, that's also my kryptonite.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: So for me, putting some structure around my week and then really reiterating that model week until I got it right to work for my energy levels, to kind of give myself some structure.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And again, I don't wanna spend, I don't wanna turn this into like a five hour podcast.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: So go back and listen to episode number 12.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: It's called Designing your Perfect Week.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It's all about what to consider when building your model week.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: And remember, we want to build the week.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: We want not just the week we have, and be flexible in this.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: So this is talking about organizing your client times, organizing.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: When you're checking your inbox, when are you gonna do deep work?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: When are you gonna do little tasks?
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: When are you gonna communicate with your team and have dedicated time to your team?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: When are you gonna have dedicated time for your own personal knowledge and education?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And you know all of those emails that come in that you're like, oh yeah, I just really wanna sit down and read those.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Or oh, I wanna get to inbox zero.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Or oh, I feel like I'm checking my email all day and I wanna do this, and there's a whole episode on that, you guys.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So again, I don't wanna go crazy on it and at the same time, I wanna give you enough that it makes sense here, but identifying some rhythms within your week to help you put some bumpers and some guardrails around your time so that you are getting all of the things done that you need to get them done within some time, constraints that you're giving yourself to do that.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And if you're on a team, we're building our model week in coordination with the model weeks of our team members so that you do not become the bottleneck within your own business, and that's crazy, crazy important.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So and you've heard me maybe say this before on the podcast.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: We want to scale ourselves first Before we make that jump and we hire somebody, thinking, oh, hiring someone's gonna solve all of our problems, right Cause we just have too much to do.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I want you to be really intentional about scaling yourself first and then scaling that first employee and then scaling that second employee and really pouring into the personal and professional development of yourself and everyone around you so that you can get the most and squeeze like every drop out of the orange right From what you have before we go and spend the money and add more people to the chaos.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Once you can kind of bring some structure and organization to that, to the calendar, to your own personal methodology or way of doing business and how that interacts and interfaces with other people on your team, is just huge.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And keep in mind, like a model week may or may not be your thing, so I have clients that have a model month where they spend.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe they have two office locations and they spend like an a week in their one office and a B week in their other office location, and so maybe their week looks a little different.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: They have a week B week, a week B week, a week B week, so their month might look a little different.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I know now as a single mom I have my kids week on, week off.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: So the weeks that I have my boys look very, very different from a workload and from a timing perspective than the weeks that I don't have my boys, because I don't have to worry about driving in to and from and picking up at school and all the activities when I don't have my children.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: My day starts earlier when I do have the boys because their school day starts earlier and I'm up an animal whole heck of a lot earlier and my morning routine is just completely different when I have my boys versus when I don't.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Same thing with stop times, right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: My boys get out of school at like I don't know.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It feels like they're there for about two hours.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone else feels like this, and I have a high schooler and a middle schooler, but they're done.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I leave my house to go pick them up at 2.15 in the afternoon.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: So the weeks that I have my boys again I am wanting to be fully present with them, especially now that I'm getting half the time with them as I was before.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I wanna be pouring into them.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: So my weeks with my boys look different, and I say that just to give you flexibility and freedom to think about how you structure your week.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: One week might not look the same, but we do wanna have some sort of structure that you and your team and your clients can count on.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: But go back and listen to the episode for oodles and oodles and oodles of details about how to really figure out what the best model week for you really is.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna move us along.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: So the second strategy that I used to streamline my business was to really start developing a niche, niche, niche, tomato, tomato, I don't care what you call it, but niching down was incredibly important to us because it did a lot of different things.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: One, it allowed me to stay in my zone of genius, doing the type of work that I loved doing with the type of clients that I loved doing it for, and by having an ideal client and having you know a limited number of offerings, it really allowed my team and I to be super streamlined.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So I want you to think about it this way, right, like if you are a factory and you are manufacturing lots of different types of cereals, so your general mills and I'm gonna get totally get these like brands wrong and you're gonna all send me emails going that's Kellogg's or whatever.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But if your general mills and you're making Cheerios, which are little round, you know wheat based cereal over here, and then you're making Lucky Charms or something over here that has, you know sugary little shapes but then also these marshmallow components and a whole bunch of shapes and colors, and then we've got a third cereal that we're making over here.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: That's got.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: You know it's oatmeal and it's a hot packet type oatmeal versus and it's a pack, you know, multi individual servings inside of a box versus one big giant box of cereal.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: You know you're making all of these things, all these different ways, so you have to have different processes for each type of cereal that you're delivering.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: So if you are making just one type of cereal, you're gonna have all of your machines set up the same way.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Everybody on the team is gonna be trained to use those machines in the most efficient and effective way possible.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Then when you add a second cereal line, you've got a second set of way of doing things.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So you're gonna have a different standard operating procedure on how to set up the machines to make the Lucky Charms and how to make the marshmallows and add them together, and then when you add that third oatmeal, you know we're going to have something totally different and different packaging process and it's just all completely different.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: While it's also in that same genre of cereal, we've got three separate processes.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: So I always think about financial planning kind of similarly, in the sense that if you are doing college planning over here and retirement planning over here and debt consolidation over here, you've got different processes.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Your team is going to need to learn different, potentially different software.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: They're gonna need to have a knowledge base in three totally different areas of financial planning versus the more streamlined you become.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So as we started focusing more in executive compensation packages for clients who are five to 10 years out from retirement and getting ready to transition into retirement with complex packages, that became our specialty, and so my team did not really have to have vast knowledge of college funding.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: They did not have to have vast knowledge of debt consolidation or cash flow analysis.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: You know we were focused on something totally different, so they were able to focus their educational efforts into a couple particular categories.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So kind of the same thing applies the fewer offers that you have or the more narrowed the specialty or the type of focus that you have.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Not only can you charge more because that's like a whole different conversation about why niching down is really really beneficial to your bottom line but purely from a process standpoint, it is so much easier to teach a team to do one thing right, to teach your employees how to make Cheerios and do the same thing all day, every day, you know, all week long, all year long versus teaching them how to make Cheerios some days and Frosted Flakes the next, and Lucky Charms the day after that, and then Count Chocula a couple of days later and then Fruity Pebbles the next day.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, what happens is, every time you switch a process, it takes time right.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: There's the oh shoot, how do we do this again?
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Or ooh, I haven't done that in a while.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: I need to refresh, we need to switch the machines over, we need to change the color and I need to remember how to add the dye.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Like same thing with your financial planning process.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So the more narrowed the market you work with, the more narrowed the actual processes, the fewer number of templates that you'll be required to create, maintain and update.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Everything becomes more streamlined when you do serve a niche.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: So even if we move like profitability aside or being known for aside or her referrals aside, if we're purely looking at this just from a time in perspective, niching down is extremely efficient for streamlining templates, processes, procedures and training.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the next three tips kind of blend together, if you will, but the third one is really this idea of finding the pressure point and then fixing it.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: So this sounds like a pretty awful activity and I promise it kind of is, but it's also like kind of not.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Is really sitting down and just writing a list of all of the things that bring you pressure, bring you pain, that you hate.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Right, write it all down.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And this applies to literally every area of life.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So maybe you absolutely hate going back and forth with clients to schedule appointments.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are not thrilled with your current health or your current weight or your current water intake.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are not thrilled with a current employee.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's work that you're doing that you don't enjoy doing.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe you have clients in your book that you cannot stand working with.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: They bring like a whole new definition to a PETA client.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So and by PETA client I hope you know what I mean Pain in the behind right Client.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: So writing a list of all of the things that you hate.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you're stacking negativity.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: When you do this and I promise this is part of a CEO day strategy that I have used for years and years and years.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: And as I changed my practice after that first pregnancy and really wanted to make all these dramatic changes, and as I go through this again in this business keeping a giant list of you know in my CEO days and really brainstorming about all of the things that right now bring me pain, bring me pressure, bring me frustration and things that I hate and then literally sitting down and addressing them one by one and coming up with solutions to make them better and, like I said, it sounds like you're stacking negativity, but you're not.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: You're actually just creating a plan of attack.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: And then the goal is to go into each of these things and say, okay, what am I going to do about it, what is the result that I'm looking for and what do I need to do to reverse, engineer it, to come up with a strategy to make it better, faster, smarter, cheaper or easier.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking like, literally, this can be anything and everything.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you a really stupid example.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: It's not stupid because it saved me like so much time.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I absolutely cannot stand how much time it takes to do hair in the morning.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: I know this sounds like a really, really dumb example, but let me, let me explain.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: So the time that it takes in the morning to, you know, wet my hair and then blow dry it and then curl it and make sure that it has volume and that it's shiny and all the right things, after running around getting the kids off to school, getting them to the right places, knowing that I have to be, a lot of the work that I do is on camera, with one-on-one coaching and I record the calls and that that I show up looking like, you know, a supermodel or something every single time.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: But I do record the calls for people.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I do want to show up looking my best.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I do want to look professional.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I do a lot of virtual keynote speaking, so I'm on camera a lot and it just was taking a ton of time every day and it was honestly it was annoying me and I hated it and it felt like it was right in this gap in the morning where I was really at my most creative and I felt like I was wasting some of my most creative time just getting ready for my day.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So I tried a bunch of those ladies You'll be like yes, I know what you're talking about All of these heatless curlers that I kept seeing influencers using like all over Instagram, and finally found one that I liked, figured out a technique that worked for me.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: So now I look like a crazy person at night, but I wrap my hair.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: It takes me about three, four minutes to wrap my hair in this crazy thing at night, but in the morning when I take my hair out and I've got my little system down right, like, I spray it with this before I put it in.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I put it in, then I do this and then in the morning I literally just unclip the thing, pull it out and have these, these gorgeous curls.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: That literally would have taken me anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes to get previously.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: So for me it sounds something so trivial, but being able to find a product to establish a new process that saves me over a half hour of time in my day that I absolutely hated wasting because it was creative time.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I don't mind putting in the three or four minutes right before bed because it's downtime for me.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not in my most creative state, I'm tired.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I wouldn't otherwise be producing something.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: So for me this was a silly example, but a huge time saver.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: And so literally it's going through this list and saying, okay, this is a problem or this is a pain point, or this is a pressure point for me.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: What can I do to solve that pressure point?
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And that could look like something in your life, that could look like man.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: Having to clean my house on a Saturday is a huge pressure point, is a huge pain point.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Or having to mow my lawn, like these things are.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: They're taking up precious time that I could be spending with my family.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: They they're kind of hanging over my head all week and good Lord if it rains, then I have to push back, wind the lawn.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And now we're talking about doing it on a Sunday or having to miss a little Johnny soccer games that I can get this stuff done.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Otherwise my grass looks three feet tall.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: And then I feel bad about it because my neighbors are looking at me thinking, oh, this guy doesn't have it together, you know, whatever it is.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So for me it was the minute I could afford to buy back my time in any category.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: That is absolutely something that I looked at and balanced Like does this make sense?
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Does this make sense for me to pay somebody $137 to clean my house instead of me having to do this activity that I dislike doing and it bothers me and it hangs over my head and it looms over me?
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I could pay somebody that money to get it done.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: They're in, they're out in two hours while I'm not even here, I'm out and about doing my thing.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Then for me to spend a whole Saturday morning doing those things myself, and so this kind of bleeds over into point number four, or thing.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Number four is this idea of streamline, streamline, streamline, streamline.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: So literally anything and everything I can streamline in my business, in my personal life.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I want to do that.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: So, even something as simple as my hair and I know this, it sounds so trivial, but I know there are some of you listening that have long hair that are like, yes, girl, I understand what you are saying.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: So whatever your hair is right, whatever your version of this is something that takes me too long.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I don't enjoy doing it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It's interrupting precious time for me that I could be doing something way more effective or something more enjoyable?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, so in my business.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: So again, when we're talking specifically about the business going from 80 hours to 25, it was getting my processes out of my head, documenting them into a standard operating procedure.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And then again it's how do I make this faster?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: So originally it was just word documents, right, like step by step.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Here's how I do something, and then trying to teach those and then that involved into an Excel spreadsheet with hyperlinks, right, okay?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: So if I'm going to be sending the same email to a client every time, instead of recreating it or retyping it every time, can I just make a template?
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, now, how do I make it easy to find this template?
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: How do I make it easy to use this template?
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: How do I make it easy to train somebody else to use this template?
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: And literally giving the seven key processes that I think exist in every single financial planning practice a place to live, documented on paper, that I could train and teach somebody else and buy back some of my time.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: That, to me, was just huge, and so, if you're in our group coaching program, right, this is what we're going through right now.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: We are literally going through right now our financial planning processes start to finish.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: So literally every single teeny, tiny minute step.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: That happens from the moment a prospect calls you or the moment you reach out to a prospect, all the way through them saying, yes, you're doing the plan, you're creating recommendations, we're putting stuff in the software, we're scheduling meetings, we're sending follow ups, we're sending pre-meeting emails, we're sending checklists.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: We are literally creating all of those things All the way through.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Right now, when a client says, yes, I'd like to be your client long term, and we're starting to roll over funds and take applications and all of the things.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And we're going through each one of those pieces and saying how can I make this smarter?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: How can I make this faster?
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: How can I make this better?
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: How can I make this easier?
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: How can I, instead of going back and forth if a pain point was, I hate going back and forth with clients schedule an appointment?
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Is there a calendar software that we can use?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: How does that work?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: It's just spending the time, the energy and the potential of the money to go ahead and get it set up and put it in.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: And what are the email templates I want to go out to the client?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: How do I want, like?
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: What are the parameters that I want to put into the booking software.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: How many of these meetings do I want to do in a day?
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Like, right, we're solving all of those pain points, figuring out first what exists, what's compliant, how does it work, how do I get it set up, how do I maximize it.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: It's a lot right.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: But once we get some of those things established and we can automate, we can delegate some things.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: When we're going through this financial planning process, we look at and we're like you know, in this program together, we're like is that something you even need?
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: Can we just straight delete that?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And then how else can we streamline?
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: So, creating recommendations, templates, creating checklists, creating standard operating procedures, creating all of the things that make it easier and faster for you to do business.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: And then this is where I don't want to underestimate doing the same thing in your home life.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: How can you automate things in your home life?
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: How can you delegate things in your home life?
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: How can you hire different people, vendors, software to take over some of these things?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: What can we delete Like, what are we doing that?
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Honestly, isn't that impactful where that time could be better spent doing something that would bring higher amounts of value to our clients, or higher impact to our clients, or higher value to our family and friends, or higher impact to our family and friends?
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And then how do we teach it and how do we template it?
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So identifying what are.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: If you listen to the podcast, I feel like you should not have more than three offers.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: But what are your three offers?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: How do we streamline those?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: How do we make them able to be repeated with the same level of consistency and the same level of excellence over and over and over again?
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: And then how do we slowly and systematically teach and train other people to do each of those things, which kind of blends into the fifth thing was really hiring a small but simple team, putting the right people in the right roles with the right culture, and hiring and I put this one last particularly in this conversation, because I don't always think hiring is the right solution for everybody.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: I know often when we're overwhelmed, the first thing we jump to is oh, I just need to hire somebody.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: The downside is, if you are not organized, if you don't have time in your schedule to dedicate to training someone properly, to giving them the tools, the systems, the processes, the time that they need to fully to be able to execute the vision that you have for that role.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Often we don't even do a great job spending the time to craft out the role and what's.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: You know, what are our expectations within that role?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: What are our measurable KPIs of the role?
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Right, we're just so desperate to hire somebody to take the next thing from us that we're not even hiring.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Well, and so it's not always the right answer.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And, yes, I think having a team I could not have done what I did without my team.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I think having a team of people is incredibly important.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I have a team of people in this business.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: If you want to go fast, go alone.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: If you want to go far, go together.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: We've all heard that you need a team, so don't get me wrong, but you need the right team for your business.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Right, we want to buy back our time specifically in the areas that our business needs at most.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: So, as in the group coaching, like as we're going through these planning processes, or even in my one-on-one coaching, right, we're looking at every single teeny, tiny step within your process and determining how teachable is it and how templatable is it.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Do we have a template for it?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: No, can we create one, yes, do I have one for you to work off of?
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Usually, yes, or is it something that we need to create?
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: And then how, where, when and how do we teach someone else to do that particular step on our behalf?
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give you a quick example.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I know this episode is getting long here, but when I first started my business, I was told oh, the first person there's this hierarchy, right, the first person you hire needs to be a phone caller.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: And I remember thinking like, okay, well then, if that's the first person I need to hire, that's the first person I need to hire.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: So I hired this phone caller and she was okay.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And I just three, four months in, I just remember kind of looking at it, going gosh, her results of phone calling are not nearly as good as my results, right.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And I know your first thought is like, well, yeah, I get off your high horse, girl.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Often some people do things better than us.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Or man, just the fact that somebody else is doing my phone calling for me is huge, right, and still saving me all kinds of time and energy.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: But what I realized is I actually this might call me crazy, don't turn me off just yet but I liked phone calling, I was good at it, I could call these orphan clients in my book and I could get appointments Because of my experience and my expertise and my knowledge.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I was able to call them, you know, say just enough to kind of peak their interest about a particular product or service that they already owned with us.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Enough to get them in the door, where my phone caller didn't necessarily have that same skill set.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: So she was off doing phone calls that I actually enjoyed and was really really good at while I was sitting in my office filling out forms and paperwork, and I was not very good at it and I did not enjoy it.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: And so what I realized for me in my business and what I needed, is that if I could actually teach her to do all of these forms and paperwork and freed up my time to call it actually freed up, let's say I was spending I don't know 10 hours a week on paperwork.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I could spend three hours being really really effective with my phone calling and getting better results and handing her my paperwork, and regardless of how long it took her to fill it out, she was getting better results Less than I goes, you know better results with the paperwork because it was actually better suited for her.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: So I always hesitate to say like, oh, just hire somebody Cause.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: The question I always get is well, what's the order?
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: I need to hire Libby?
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: What's the perfect team?
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: What's the you know, whatever?
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: And my personal opinion and maybe unpopular is that it truly depends on what your business needs.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Not what Sally's business needs, not what David's business needs, but what your business needs.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: What is the type of planning that you're delivering, what is the type of client experience that you are bringing to your clients?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: What is your knowledge, your expertise, your sweet spots, what is your personality type?
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: And then hiring in based on what your business needs.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: How templatable, how teachable.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: What can we give away first?
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: And then letting that kind of determine the right role for your business.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: So, long story short, I've sucked all of the oxygen out of the room today, but you know, thinking through, what are the right people and the right roles in your business?
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: How can we buy back our time?
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: It might not be full-time people, it might be vendors.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Right, like hiring someone to cut the grass or the cleaning people.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: It might be software, like calendaring software.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: It might be something that you invest in that makes you better, faster, smarter or be able to do something cheaper or easier.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: So kind of.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: The five things again are if I had my druthers it would be, and of course there's a gazillion things beyond this right.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: But when I think about 80 hours down to 25, it was, oh, absolutely, model Week checkout, episode number 12.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: It was developing a niche and streamlining our processes for that niche.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Episode number 10, developing your ICA how to create a laser-focused marketing message that speaks directly into the hearts of your clients.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna link all this in the show notes for you guys.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, systematizing or finding the pressure points and then fixing those.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: So really spending the time to carve out what is painful to me and then taking time to find an ideal solution to actually tackle the problem.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: Number four would be streamline, streamline.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Streamline, document your process, automate your process, delegate your process, delete pieces that don't matter, create templates, checklists, standard operating procedures literally everything and anything you can to make something faster and easier to execute.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: So writing a follow-up email is great.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Having a follow-up email template even better.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Having a follow-up email template that's a hyperlink inside of an SOP even even better.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: Teaching somebody else to take your notes, extrapolate them into the template that they find inside of the standard operating procedure is best, right?
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: How do we keep incrementally making everything faster, faster, faster, easier, easier, easier.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: And then fifth is hiring buying back your time, whether that's team, whether that's vendors, whether that's in your home or in your business.
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: How do we leverage the time, talents and experiences, expertise of other individuals so that we can really really focus and harness our time inside of our model week most effectively?
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that is all I've got for you guys this week, and by all I've got, I'm like whoo, that was actually like a lot.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: So make sure you check out episode number 12 and episode number 10 to expand on what I was talking about here today.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Also, I'd love to connect out with you in the Efficient Visor community over on Facebook and over on LinkedIn.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Those are the two main places that I hang out online.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: So, if you are interested, if you're like yes, this all sounds really lovely, I have no freaking idea where to start.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Great, join us for our next round of group coaching that starts in January.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: We will go ahead and link the wait list and you can go ahead and hop on that wait list as soon as we have all of the details for our start date and timing and all the things, the wait list will be the first people to know.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: So much for your time and attention.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: And don't forget that Family Tree template is available.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: I will link that in the show notes here on iTunes as well.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: If there's anything else I can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: I'll see you guys next time.