Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 196: Ideas to Implement - Project Management vs Client Tasks with Guest Lauren Hong

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196: Ideas to Implement - Project Management vs Client Tasks with Guest Lauren Hong · 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, my goal every week is to create a follow-up episode that is short, sweet and all about the actionable items from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Consider the ideas to implement episodes your CliffsNotes version.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: So each week, I'm going to distill the episode down into, hopefully, a couple of bullet points that you can act on immediately to make a big, big impact in your business.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I want you to take what you've learned and actually finish it, implement it, do the thing.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I'm your host of the Efficient Advisor, Libby Grieri, 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 to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel obsessed human.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: And I'm here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same things and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way overwhelmed.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was all about project management versus client tasks with my guest, Lauren Hong.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And, as we talked about in the episode, getting organized in your business for once and for all is one of the most common goals listed when advisors sign up for a group coaching program on the intake form.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter if you've been in the business for one year, five years or 25 years.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: This is a common theme for everybody.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And look, I get it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: And how do you get all of these ideas that you have in your head and these big dreams and goals that you have for your business?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: How do you get them organized alongside all of the systems and processes that you need inside of your financial planning practice?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: There's so many things to keep track of, so many automations you want to integrate, so many delegations, so many workflows literally so many things.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So in this week's episode, Lauren came on to share about project management.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So she had reached out to me.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't know Lauren before our pre-podcast interview, but it was really on her heart to share about this idea of project management.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So she manages a lot of projects with financial advisors.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: She is in the marketing space for financial advisors and she does a lot of collaboration and uses Asana, which is a project management tool, and really just kind of wanted to share her expertise.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So I brought her on the show.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: We were walking through it and talking about it and I had sort of an aha moment in the episode.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: So every time I do an interview and you guys wouldn't believe this, but I scrap some interviews that I do which I feel always really, really terrible about when it happens.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: But my team will listen to it and if there's not like a really good hey, I can take this away and tactically implement it.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: We're not going to air it.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And so often when I'm doing an episode or recording, I'm looking for that moment where I go oh, that's the thing right, Like that's the, the yes, that's the ROI for the listeners, right, Because I have your best interest in mind and I tell our group coaching program this when we start that, no matter what we do, I will never, ever, ever, ever ask you to waste a single precious moment of your most glorious, finite commodity, which is your time.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So I'm never going to introduce fluff, I'm never going to give you work for the sake of work right.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: We're only going to hyper-focus on things that will create a solid foundation and that will actually move your business forward.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So my aha moment in this episode was really this idea of project management versus task management for your clients and when to delineate or when to separate.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Here's when I use my CRM and here's when I use a project management tool.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And something I didn't say in the episode but I thought it'd be important to mention today, because we were literally just talking about this in one of our groups is, even if you have all of your workflows living inside of your CRM, you're still going to want to have a master spreadsheet, Excel document, something that has your tasks down.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So, let's say, your broker dealer decides to switch CRMs or you as an RIA decide that you're going to jump to another CRM.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Or let's say, Red Tail or Wealthbox make some changes behind the scenes.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Often the things that we think will port over correctly or will update correctly don't, and it's very difficult as the CEO of your business to sit down and really go through all of your workflows If you're having to, like get into your CRM and find all of the different variations.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I personally love to have like a table of contents, if you will, and this can live inside of your project management tool.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: So in my own business, I used Salesforce and we tried to keep everything in there so that it would be compliant and all in one happy location.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But I had a lot of stuff living in what we had like a shared drive and that was really our main hub where everything lived so that I could very easily on my CEO days, sit down and say, okay, I want to look at all of our processes, I want to look at all of our email templates, I want to look at our written recommendations templates.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Like, I want to look at everything and make sure that it's being said the way I want it to be said.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Do we need to make any updates?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Has our ICA changed?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Has our brand changed in any way?
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Have I learned something new that I want to add or contribute to these things?
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: And you want it to live in a location where you can go find it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, Sorry, side note, but I was thinking about that as I hit record.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So what?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Lauren kind of differentiated for me and I was like, oh, okay, well, how does this fit in?
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Because we don't want to have so many different tools and adding all this more additional software.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: So she was mentioning Asana, which is a project management tool.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I personally use ClickUp.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: There's Trello.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: There's a gazillion different Project Monday.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: There's so many different project management tools out there and they're all amazing.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: They all have their own pros, cons, attributes and I've had advisors try to put their whole workflow into Trello or into Asana or something like that and then they're missing things because it's not directly connected and it doesn't speak directly to their CRM.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And then I have other advisors who are trying to put their big business goals and the tasks associated with the bigger picture, the more visionary stuff, inside of their CRM and it doesn't really have a great place to live.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So when Lauren was talking and I had that moment of like, oh well, that makes perfect sense.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: So here's here was my big takeaway is setting up something like a sauna or a project management tool to manage the bigger project.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: So let's say you're wanting to build out your start to finish financial planning prospects.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So from the moment a client walks in the door as a prospect, all all the way through your discovery calls and your connecting and your goals, discussion, your gathering of the data and your inputting and your analysis and your recommendations at all, the way to the point where the client says, yes, I want to work with you forever and ever and ever on an ongoing basis.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Let's say you're wanting to start that process and you're wanting to build that out Now, while some of those workflows that you create might live inside of your CRM.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: If you're wanting to set goals for yourself, like, hey, we need to get this organized, I need to find out what collateral we're using for or is available for our discovery calls, or we need to build this checklist, or I need to create this template, that's where a project management software tool can be really, really helpful.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: So that was my big idea to implement from this episode was using Asana or ClickUp for project management and then using your CRM for the actual nitty gritty client stuff and the actual workflows that you want to turn on.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So when a client says, yes, Libby, we want to work with you, and you're like, great, we're going to onboard, right, we want to turn on our onboarding workflow that's inside of the CRM to that specific client, right, and it'll set up all the tasks and reminders and all of the things.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: But if I'm wanting to high level, like redo our entire onboarding process, I'm going to have that project live inside of Asana until we can actually execute it inside of workflows.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Or if you have a goal to build out a team and you're working on job descriptions and you're hiring headhunters or recruiters and you have contracts like where do we store all of that stuff?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: To me those bigger, higher level, non-client oriented stuff would live inside of your project management tool and you have contracts like where do we store all of that stuff?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: To me, those bigger, higher level, non-client oriented stuff would live inside of your project management tool.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, that was kind of my big takeaway.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Lauren shared with us in the episode different ways that she organizes her files and how she kind of looks at different projects and what all can go inside of there.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: So I know personally because I use ClickUp.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: You can add other people to a project.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: You can give them tasks.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: They can give you tasks.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: You can create checklists inside of the project with deadlines.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You could upload documents.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: You can add a Google doc.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I mean there's so many cool things that project management tools can do for you and the best part is is right.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I run a pretty big business.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I have a couple employees and I still use the free version of ClickUp and I'm my understanding is that the free version of Asana is really, really similar, in that you can do a lot of things without even having to pay a penny.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: You get to, and I know.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: They're both integrating significant amounts of AI to help you with all of these projects, and it is a phenomenal thing.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: So if you haven't looked into project management software, go ahead and do that.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I've linked three of the biggest ones for you in the show notes for this episode, and I'd love to continue this conversation and learn more about how you're separating your tasks or to answer any questions that you may have, and I can funnel them all to Lauren and get her expertise as well.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So I would love to talk more with you out in the Efficient Advisor community over on Facebook, or you can DM me and connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.