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226: How to Design Your Perfect Schedule - *Replay with Download* · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The number one question I got from advisors for years, and still get today, is Libby, how did you get it all done in 25 hours a week?
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm over here drowning and I'm putting in double that.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, I feel that on so many levels because that was me early on.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: And, ironically, the number one question I got from corporate folks is Libby, if you could just share one thing with advisors from an efficiency standpoint, especially advisors in those early years of their careers what would you share?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: And luckily, the answer for both of those questions is the same thing I get to kill two birds with one stone today, yippee.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: But what that means is that this is foundational to working efficiently.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: In today's episode, I'm going to drill down 16 plus years of compressing a billion hours a week into just 25 and massaging that 25 hours a week over many, many years, and what I learned about designing the perfect schedule.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: This perfect schedule, or what I call a model week, is a schedule that you've designed with intention that suits your personality, for your business goals, with your energy levels and your work-life balance objectives in mind.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Look, I know you're here because you know it's possible to have energy left over for your family and still have your dream business.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: You know the business that you're running instead of it running you.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I get what it's like to balance all the things delivering high quality advice and trying to get a healthy meal on the table for your family between soccer practice and homework and PS.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: No one else is judging you if you do chicken nuggets frequently enough to justify the big bag from Costco and if you're new to the Efficient Advisor.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm Libby Grywe.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I built a 100% referral-only planning practice and grew it 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, wife, friend, sister, daughter and, frankly, a travel-obsessed human.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I'm here to walk alongside you and 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.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: So move over exhaustion, move over overwhelm and move over Advisor ADD.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: So let's dive in.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So several years ago, we were hosting two-day live events where advisors from all over the country would come in and my team and I would show them all of I shouldn't say all but a lot of the efficiencies that we used in our practice that allowed me to work just the 25 hours a week as a solo advisor, and one of the biggest challenges was figuring out from all of the things that my team created and built and did on a daily basis to work extremely efficiently.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: It was next to impossible to squish that all down into two days.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I mean I wish I really had a month with all of these advisors to really show them all of the things that we did.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And when we were building the workshop and really looking at, okay, well, what are the easiest to implement, most impactful things that we know and do, one of the things that always popped and was really kind of first and foremost for me like, frankly, when we were then doing some coaching programs, it was okay, well, what if I had a month with people?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: What would we show them?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And then, what if I had a week with people?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: What would I show them then?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, what if we only had two days?
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, what if I only had one hour?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Then Okay, what if we only had two days.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, what if I only had one hour?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: And if I only had one hour with advisors?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: This would be the thing that I would choose to share, because once I learned how to build a model week that really worked for me, and then how to reiterate it and massage it, that was a game changer.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And when I say model week, what I mean by that is a schedule that you've designed like I said in the intro, you know with intention, taking into account all of the things that are unique to you and your practice.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And so it could also it could look a lot of different ways.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: It could look like a model day.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It could look like a model month where maybe you have you know, maybe you look a lot of different ways.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It could look like a model day.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: It could look like a model month where maybe you have you know, maybe you're a road warrior on weeks one and three and you're out visiting clients, and maybe on weeks two and four you're in the office.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So it's going to look a little different for everybody.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to share how I built my model week, how we adapted it over the years, how I kind of figured out what was working and what was not working.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And so really no matter where you are in your business career, you could be in your first year, you could be in your third year, you could be in your 16th year.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You will have I had no joke at least 100 iterations of my model week over the years.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: It is to me one of the most crucial elements of efficiency, and I say that because when I started my career I was straight grinding.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You know I was working that 40, 50, 60, sometimes 80 hours a week.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And you know, when I looked up the definition of grinding a few years ago I can't remember exactly what it is, but it was something to the effect of rubbing something so hard that pieces are literally falling off of it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So grinding was not really my jam right, but I was in that building stage of my business, so it didn't matter if it was.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: But I was in that building stage of my business, so it didn't matter if it was nights, weekends, whatever someone wanted to meet, I was there.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I was your girl and that might sound familiar to you and so it was when I found out I was pregnant that I knew OK, there's got to be a better way here.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: There is no way I can do this and have a baby.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: And I just remember thinking, gosh, like I don't want to give up the income that I was making either.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I was pretty happy with that.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So I spent some time and it really boiled down to doing a couple of different things.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: So the first thing I did was really decide, and make this actual decision, that when I was at the office, I was going to be 100% at the office and when I was at home, I was going to be 100% at home.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I remember just being kind of stuck in that cycle where when I was working, I was mixing in home tasks and then when I was home, I was thinking about things that were going on at the office and I was really just always both places, which meant I was never fully present.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So the first thing I did, and that I committed to, was not having any type of work access to email or access to work.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Email on my phone and my computer stayed at the office.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: That was the commitment that I made to myself and to my family, because zero access means I, straight up, can't right, and one of the things I always tell people is, before you scale your business, you literally have to scale yourself first.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So we'll talk about finding, like, where you're wasting time, and for me, it took a lot of willpower to break this habit right of working from home and doing home stuff at work, and this is where I called upon my team to help me with that and to help me stick to it.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: And, speaking of teams, having a team in place is critical.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: You need someone.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: While you're at home, you know doing your mom thing or doing your dad thing.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: You need someone who is competent and qualified to I don't know, you know handle business when you're not there.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And when I sold my business, I was probably, like I said, on my hundredth iteration of my model week.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: So what I'm going to do is share with you what my schedule looked like, looked like when I was, you know, at the very, very end stages of my business, and then I'll share what it looked like before and kind of how I worked and tweaked and twisted it and rearranged it to get to really what worked best for me and for my team.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when I would walk in the office on Monday morning, the first thing that I would do is, no, not check my email.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I'll talk about that later, but I would sit down in our conference room.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: So, because I was only working three days a week, it was really important for me to be uber prepared.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So we worked two weeks in advance of all of our meetings.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: So I would sit down on a Monday morning and I would have a pile of files, originally paper and then ultimately digital, but I would have this stack of files and everything would be prepped and ready for those meetings that were two weeks away.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: So the two weeks out thing was really helpful because, as I was going through those files and looking at all of the notes, um, you know that our team had made of every interaction that I had had or that our team had had with that client between the last meeting and this meeting.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Um, as I was working through the agenda and massaging that, I had plenty of time to run illustrations, ask my team to do research, to create anything that need to be created, to look at recommendations.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I had two weeks then to get that stuff perfected and done by the actual date of their appointment, because there was nothing worse to me than walking into a meeting feeling unprepared.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Right, being prepared was the most efficient way to maximize that face-to-face meeting time and that's also like those were the most successful meetings.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: So you know, we've all had that meeting where you were chatting with your clients and about halfway through you had that moment where you're like, oh my goodness, I had told them the last time that they were here that today we'd talk about long-term care, or today we'd talk about blah, blah, blah, and you're like, uh-oh, I need to pivot and I don't have anything prepared, I don't have recommendations, I don't have any analysis drawn up to show them how this will fit into their overall picture, and that either required a bunch of follow-up or I kind of looked like maybe like a little bit of an idiot in the meeting, or they had to come back, which was really inefficient for them and really inefficient for me.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So by having these two weeks out, it just gave us more time to get things done, to get them polished and to get them prepared.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And that way too, in case I had a sick kid and I had to go take a day off or pick them up from school, I wasn't scrambling to get things done.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: We had plenty of time and plenty of buffer built in Plus showing up with a really polished agenda with, you know trades, asset allocation recommendations, you know all of the things that we wanted to do ready to go and on the agenda.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It made us look like we had put time and effort into their plan, which we had.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: We would have paperwork, any applications, any forms ready to go and that just allowed us to get so much more done in a meeting.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: We didn't have to waste any time printing anything off or filling anything out.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: It was all ready to go.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: And really I never wanted to give advice to clients kind of like on the spot, the way that, or at least my mode of operation was.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted all of our advice to be really well thought through, right, and I didn't want clients, you know, making recommendations on the spot.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: You know I want them to know that I put the work and effort and really thought about it before I let it pop out of my mouth.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So this working two weeks in advance so let's say it was a client coming in for a full financial plan update Having this full two-week window really gave me a ton of time to write the written recommendations to modify the templates that my team had already created for that client and one of the keys for me to be able to do this like super duper efficiently?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Is that our readiness or the way that I would have my team prepare the files?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Literally every single thing was at my fingertips.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I never had to go searching for anything and waste any of my time, you know, looking for a rate of return or look at you know, we just had a really extensive list of everything that I needed prepared, and I may or may not use it, and that's okay.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I just didn't want to spend any of my time going and searching for all the things.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And kind of a side note but this is important when we're talking about the agenda phase is that our team did a really great job documenting all the details.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So nine times out of 10, no more like 99 out of 100 times when a client called into the office, I never talked to them, so I never got the details about their mom not feeling well.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Or if they called to take $5,000 out for a down payment on a car, I usually didn't know or hear about that until this two weeks out from our meeting.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I usually didn't know or hear about that until this two weeks out from our meeting, and I would then be able to go into our CRM and pluck out these details and add them to the agenda.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: So when the clients came into the office I could say, oh my gosh, I want to look out the window.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Is your new car here?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Did you drive the new car?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Or hey, you know what I heard?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Your mom's not doing so great, how's she doing now?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: And all of those things just really added to the client experience.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: But this is the time of the week that I would then do those.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And the good news is is because I was only working six business days in advance for me it was close enough to the appointment where I actually didn't forget any of these.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You know, kind of warm, fuzzy details, more of the qualitative stuff versus the quantitative stuff.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, sorry.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So how does that play into the model week?
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So I am going to attach in the show notes for you my model week and I'm going to try to find a couple sample model weeks from different advisors that I've coached over the years, cause, as you'll learn here in the next however many minutes, what worked for me might not work for you and what worked for Dave might not work for Natalie.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to help you build that, but I'm also going to give you a blank template so that you can go in there and take a peek.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: So the way that it worked for me is when I would come in, so all this agenda stuff I would from 9am to 10am on Monday morning.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I would get all of the preparation for all of my appointments two weeks out done by 10 am and then delegate that.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Then, from 10 to noon, that day was my block of time where I would do all of my planning.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That's the writing, the recommendations, that's the stuff that popped up for meetings next week.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: That's the stuff that I ascertained from the agenda prep time that needed to be done for the two weeks out, ascertained from the agenda prep time that needed to be done for the two weeks out.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: And what I'd like to acknowledge at this point is I had still it was noon and I had still never opened my email.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: And this was really intentional, because I learned about myself that if I checked my email first thing in the morning, I would get distracted by all of the things that needed to be done or delegated, or I'd get obsessed with putting out some sort of a fire and I had to turn off all of my notifications on my email too, so that all those dings and notifications would just, you know, I would get sucked in immediately.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I'm very easily distracted, so by not even having access to my email until noon was a really, really good method.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: That worked for me.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: And if you head out to the Efficient Advisor website, there is a video library out there and there's a video that I did with productivity specialist Amber De La Garza on how to better and more effectively manage your inbox, and it was I mean, the tactics that she shared were, you know, life-changing for me, and I and I mean that seriously because I had over 2000 emails sitting in my inbox and I was able to whittle that down to like a hundred.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I was just one of those people.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: My bad, okay.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So then, after after this noon window, I had a little block of time to eat lunch and then I went straight into back-to-back client meetings.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: And a couple of reasons that I did back-to-back meetings were I used to leave this like half hour window between client appointments, and the goal originally was that I would get all of my follow-up done, I'd wrap up my meeting notes was that I would get all of my follow-up done, I'd wrap up my meeting notes and what I found in practice was that my client meetings would go over and then I'd be left with this like little window of time and I'd be like you know what?
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I only have like 10 or 15 minutes by the time I go to the bathroom and get some coffee.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to be able to do anything anyway.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So I found that I was wasting these blocks of time between the meetings and I was actually talking to my staff and distracting them too.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: So for me, knowing that I had so I had two conference rooms, and knowing that I had clients sitting and waiting for me in the next conference room, gave me that motivation to literally get it all done in 60 minutes.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And how I got it all done in 60 minutes, that's like a totally different podcast, and we'll do that another day.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: The only time we did longer meetings was if it was a planned delivery, and to eliminate that time between meetings, I came up again.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: This is kind of like okay, I see a problem, how do I fix it?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I came up with a meeting notes template that allowed me to complete all of my notes in the meeting, also documenting all the things, and it also had a template in there that I could check boxes and write some things in for my team so that they could grab those meeting notes when I went to the next conference room and they knew exactly what they needed to do, who needed to do it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The client follow-up email was pretty much already done and they could go ahead and get that drafted and sent to me and I was already then moving on in my next meeting.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then I had a little window of time built in, I think about a half hour that was dedicated time for my team and I to get together and I could answer all the questions that had accumulated for them throughout the day.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And this was the product of just being interrupted by your team, and I don't mean that in a mean way, but all day long phone calls were coming in, emails were coming in, people needed me to answer questions and again I got really easily distracted.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: So I found that if I had this block of time dedicated to them, later in the day they could come, sit down in my office and ask me 27 questions and they still had time to go get all those things executed for clients before the end of the day.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And then I went into my additional client meetings and evening meetings.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: So when I had my son in 2008, I shaved my schedule back to three nights a week meeting with clients and then eventually compressed that into two evenings a week and then eventually compressed that into one evening a week where I had a 5, a 6, and a 7 pm and then eventually eliminated the 7 pm and that left a 5 pm and a 6 pm that were for originally were for clients that had a very difficult time getting together during the day, but then it eventually became these 5 and 6 pm time slots were only for prospective new clients, so that way we could be accommodating in the beginning in order for them to get to know us.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: We could be accommodating in the beginning in order for them to get to know us.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And there is a ton of language that I can share about how we talked about that and how we explained that to our clients, but again for another time.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: So what I found for myself and what was kind of a main driver in the way that I designed my schedule, was that I just found that if I was doing the same thing back to back to back, I could crush it.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: So if I was doing planning and I had, you know, maybe three or four plans that I was working on and maybe some of them had because we had a really specific niche market.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: They had a lot of similar attributes.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: So I found that I got like in the mode and what I would write out for one client, I was like, ooh, that would actually work for so-and-so and so-and-so and same thing with client meetings.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Like when I got and you know what I'm talking about when you feel on, when I would get on and I do that in a client meeting, I could then do it Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and be able to continue to repeat that.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And I have self-diagnosed ADD.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So, like I couldn't do the same thing all day long, I had to switch it up a little bit and that's just, um, you know, kind of a function of trying different things.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: So I found I cannot do meetings in the morning.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I am, I was not a smart human until at least 10 AM when I was incredibly caffeinated.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: So for me and I think that was just a function of having small children, but for me I should not talk to a client before 10 am.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to keep this moving.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So then I would come in Tuesday and I had two hours blocked in the morning so I shouldn't be talking to clients about financial, complicated strategies before 10 am, but I would have a two-hour coaching window just because it was something I was super passionate about.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Did it really contribute overall to my revenue?
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I mean a little bit, but it was just something that got me fired up and I found there was a period of time where I became kind of disenchanted with the business and just needed something a little different.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And for me coaching other advisors became like this little boost on Tuesday morning.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: That was just like I'd get so fired up and so excited and it made me you know, it just really made me want to show up to work that day.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So I'd get my brain all warmed up, I'd get my energy level up and then Tuesdays were pretty much client meetings for the rest of the day.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So I would do a 10 o'clock appointment, 11 o'clock appointment, then I'd have a break and then I had a one, a two and a three.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I would check my email over that lunch break and then at 3 pm was my follow-up callback touch base time.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So at this point in the week I hadn't called anybody back that was a client.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: But again, I had extremely competent licensed staff that could take care of all of those Monday things and so over time this was a very small number of things.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: There were not very many things that truly required exclusively my attention, but if they did, we were just really clear with our clients saying, hey, libby's, in back-to-back meetings and the first opportunity that she'll have to call you back is Tuesday at 3 pm or Tuesday between 3 and 5.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So we had a very designated window and we were very clear with our clients on what to expect Now if it was an emergency.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And what I love about financial planning is that there are very rarely any life-threatening, if any life-threatening emergencies.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: I loved not being a heart surgeon because nobody's life was dependent on me calling them back.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: If it was something kind of critical on a Monday, again, we had that window where Lori could ask me the question and I could give her the answer and she could call the client back and just say, hey, libby's not available until 3 pm tomorrow.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Or, worst case scenario, I could call him in the car on the way home, or maybe that window is from four to five.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I think that's the case.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: But so I had this callback time, I had this follow-up time and I had another window there to answer all of the questions from my team.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: So Wednesdays were my day off.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I was at home, that was my day to hang out in my yoga pants shower maybe not kind of depended on how I was feeling that day.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I could date my husband that day.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Those were the days that I got all of my mom duties done and when my kids were little, of course I was watching them.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And then I'd be ready to come back in Thursday morning and be ready to roll.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And again, when I came in, I did not meet with clients right away.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I was not smart enough to do that until 10 am.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: But what I did find is, you know, there's always these things that pop up.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: So when you're reading market updates, or you know you're going to workshops and you're learning all of these things, or you come across something you're like gosh, you know I really want to learn more about that.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Or maybe it was getting a new designation.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I found it really hard to like squeeze in educational time.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So what I found is, thursday mornings, if I set aside again this hour to just educate myself and make that time available.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: So if we had a new product coming out or I was, um, you know, a wholesaler sent me something and was like, hey, you should take a look at this.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: You know I wanted to have dedicated time to actually sit and do that.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: So Thursday mornings, again before any email was opened or anything could blow up my day I had this dedicated educational time.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And the way that I organized this is I had this is a very fancy, sophisticated option for you I had a manila envelope and all week long I would throw notes in there.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: So again, it was very, very fancy.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: But I might write on a post-it note, google this or look up that or talk to so-and-so about X, and then Thursday morning I would sit down, I'd grab this educational envelope and I'd start picking through it and you know kind of prioritize or organize, and if it was talking with somebody, I'd schedule a call for them for a Thursday morning during that dedicated window, but I'd start just going through and that's how then I started knocking out those tasks and sometimes I actually use I almost forgot this Thursday morning educational time for my business coaching.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: So that way I had again dedicated time to be working on myself and then I would roll into three appointments back to back.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: So there's that back to back thing again.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: So I would do a 10, 11 and a noon and then by noon on Thursday I was officially done with all of my client meetings for the week.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: So then my team and I would get together and we would, over lunch we'd have our weekly team meeting.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of weird that we had our meetings on Thursdays, but I had a director of operations who was full-time and then I had two part-time front office and back office.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: My back office was maybe 30 hours a week and my front office was about 25.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: So Thursday was just a really good day where we had everyone in the office and it just made sense for us.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Plus, it was really great to be able to debrief from all of my client meetings that had happened that week and for us to prepare for the following week.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: So I actually really liked having our team meetings on Thursday.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Then the rest of the day was open for me and this is where that's that time where I could you know I was really.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: I found, at least for me, my best deep work, like really digging into financial plans.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I had the most energy in the afternoon, so that might not be the same for you.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: You might find that your deep work is best in the morning.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: So I would do my rapid fire power hours is what I would call them earlier in the day, where it was just like, okay, I have like 5,000 little things that will take, you know, 35 seconds to do and I'm just going to go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom and get those all done and then and I'll have a different podcast on this or at least an article or a blog post about all the different ways that I was able to get to deep work and be able to control my ADD.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: So, but anyway, it was nice just to finish up the week and have this kind of open time to just really work, and I did a lot of work with other advisors, so this was a great window to be able to plan, to connect with them and go through the cases that we were working on, and it was also that opportunity for any additional follow-up or callbacks or anything else that I needed to do up or callbacks or anything else that I needed to do, and I don't think this happened very often, but in theory, if I had all my stuff done for the week or if I was just straight up burned out, which was more likely the case, I could just go home.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: But that did, I'll be honest, that rarely happened.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I usually worked that full, full Thursday, and then that brings me to Friday, where I was off again.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: So that was my model week.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: But I want to share with you some tips and tricks on how to build your model week, and I've helped lots of advisors over the years build and rearrange and redefine.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about that for a second.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: So one thing I think everybody needs is to build in a little white space.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: It might be once a week, it might be every other week, it might be on a Friday morning when you're at home and your kids are at school.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: But this is time to work on your business and not in it.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Just time for you to dream a little and maybe think about I don't know what's that next hire I'm gonna make and what are they gonna be able to do for me, and how can I scale and how can I expand and how can I scale myself?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Or where am I getting stuck?
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: What do I need to create some templates for Really that creative work.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's even thinking up different marketing ideas or, you know, just giving yourself permission to not be in the business and be on it.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: And I say this because it was something that I missed in my business for a long period of time, when my boys were really young and life was just bananas.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of margin built in.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I felt like it was go go, go right, and I realized that that was a piece that was missing for me, so I had to put it in the calendar so that it was prioritized.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I also think it's really important to build in a buffer day.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: So maybe every I don't know like four to six weeks, my team would build in a Thursday where I had zero client appointments, so that way I had time to catch up right and catch my breath.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: So if I did have a sick kid right or, um gosh, something just took way longer, a project took way longer than I expected it to, or, you know, just little tasks popped up that I wasn't expecting, you know.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Or you know, sometimes I just wouldn't.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: When I had my windows, I wasn't in the right mood to crank on something and it took me longer than I thought it would, or it just wasn't in the mood.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: So this was that day for me, and just even knowing that it was in the calendar and coming often gave me reprieve, because if anybody can do a model week and actually stick to it like to a T perfection, you are my hero.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so often when I go through my model week with people, they'll say something to the effect of like oh, this is a lot of structure and I just want to share.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: I felt that too.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I am not naturally a person that is structured.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm kind of like that, that true entrepreneur.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Like when I started my business, it was that mindset of oh my gosh, I can do whatever I want.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: I can sleep till noon and I can work till midnight and I can work weekends or I can not.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Like, I had this.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Like you know, that's who I am.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Naturally I'm pretty free spirited and go with the flow.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: So, like as I was building my business, the idea of team meetings or model weeks, in fact the idea used to straight up irritate me.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: But I think now or you know, as my business progressed probably because I came, I became so wise and mature over the years.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Right, but I came to realize that the more structure I had, the more freedom I actually had.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that makes sense, so let me explain.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So you know, if I had these really structured three days a week at my office, hit that structure then gave me those Wednesdays and Fridays off, which was a ton of freedom, and I didn't have to work on weekends.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: So this eventual like you know realization that I needed to adapt and adopt some structure in my business changed everything and, honestly, it was really naive of me to like start a business and think like, oh, I don't need any of that, I'm never going to do that.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It's like the same thing as, like you know, before you have kids you're like, oh, when I have kids I will never.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And then you're like, oh, I get it now.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: So this is kind of the same thing, and just the freedom of knowing that I got all of my work done and that next week is ready to go and that that two weeks out is pretty much ready to go, just gave me that freedom for, you know, just gave me that freedom for brain space, for being able to relax and actually enjoy the weekend.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so some tips and tricks as you're building your model week or as you're reiterating your model week is.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: First, I just want to say this you are not going to get it right the first time.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: No way, jose.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: It's just something.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: You have to go into it, knowing that your model week is going to evolve as you and your team and your business evolve too, and you just flat out have to try stuff and find out what works or what doesn't work.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: So an example I was coaching an advisor who you know we were building her model week and she said I think what I'm going to do is Thursdays, I'm going to hold no joke nine, 10, 11 appointments Like this is going to do is Thursdays, I'm going to hold, no joke nine, 10, 11 appointments Like this is going to be my one night of the week and I think Thursdays are the best day to do it.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: And then she could sprinkle in other appointments during the week, but mainly have you know her Monday, tuesday and Wednesday to really crank on all the project pieces.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: And what she found was is she would hold these like 4 million appointments on Thursday and when she left the office Thursday evening she was so overwhelmed, you know she realized that, you know, she had all these meetings and almost every meeting had some sort of action that was required of her afterwards, whether it was meeting notes or, you know, just general follow-up or trades or things that had to be done.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: And her big goal was to not work on Fridays.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: So she would have this huge Thursday and then realized all Friday and all weekend she was haunted by the amount of work that needed to be done, that she felt like it was just left, you know, kind of unbuttoned all weekend long.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So what we ended up doing was she was committed to having this like one big, huge crazy day.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: So we moved that to earlier in the week and then that way she had time for follow-up and she could actually get it all done and really enjoy the weekend and feel, when she came into the office the next week for those big crazy days, that she was actually refreshed and kind of ready to go.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And she found for her and this might work for you too, but she would roll, you know, roll through these Mondays and Tuesdays and have just like a bajillion appointments.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: And she just got to a place where her habit was okay, I'm going to put the file here, I'm going to put, and she had like a bin and she would just stick the files in when she was done with the meetings and then she knew she had all day, wednesday, to go through everything, to do the follow-up, to delegate whatever she needed to delegate to her team, to finish her meeting notes.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Now, of course, the only caveat to that is any trades that needed to be placed.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: You all know the rules for that, but anyway, that's what really worked for her.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: So it's really just a matter of giving something a try and then actually taking the time to reflect on it and say like, okay, why am I not getting my meetings done in 60 minutes?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Or you know, and frankly some people just can't, some people have two hour meetings and on occasion we would do those for planned deliveries and they just about literally killed me.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: But it's really taking the time to say what's not working, what is working, and if it's not working, is it the model week itself, the way it's designed and built, or is it me?
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Because I would find often I was not following my model week or maybe my team wasn't following the model week and I would feel that extra pressure because an appointment got snuck in here, or I had a gap in appointments and it was rearranged, or something would just get thrown off and I'd be like, wow, why don't I have?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Why am I feeling this way?
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Why am I feeling like I didn't have enough time to get these things done?
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: So like if I found myself at the end of the week feeling overwhelmed or anxious.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: It was just a matter of taking the time to ask myself why, why am I feeling this way?
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Um, what's you know what's, what's causing this what?
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: And reflecting back and saying, okay, what did I not get done and where was that supposed to happen?
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: And was it me or was the model week inherently broken?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Or was it, um, you know, an energy level thing?
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Was I trying to do the wrong task at the wrong time or should I be batching my tasks?
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Where do you do better?
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Do you do better if you do the same thing back to back to back, or does that make you crazy?
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: So kind of taking that time to look at it and I will tell you anytime, on a Thursday where I was like I'm feeling crazy, stressed and overwhelmed, I would take a look back at my model week and really go okay, what happened here?
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: And almost every single time.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: No, every time, I'll be honest.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Every time it was because I didn't follow my model week.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: My model week was no good to me if I didn't actually execute it and it usually fell on me trying to squeeze something in that shouldn't have been there.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And it's really funny because I find this all the time.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: With advisors, we're so good at math, right, but what we do is we add things all of the time.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: With advisors, we're so good at math, right, but what we do is we add things all of the time without subtracting, right.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: So we think we can add in all of these tasks and to-dos and new ideas and all the shiny objects, right.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And then we don't actually go into the calendar and say, okay, but like, where is that time going to come from?
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to commit to this coaching program.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Great, that's going to take you, you know, two hours a week or whatever.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Uh, where is that two hours going to come from?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: We have to get better at doing our own math.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: So, you know, looking at all the things, right, um, where were we being inefficient?
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: So look back and go, where was I inefficient, was it?
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not getting my meeting notes done or it's taking too long to do that and what's a better solution?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Or was it?
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: You know, we're having to double down on appointment numbers because we weren't well prepared for those meetings and we had to schedule a second meeting to do applications or follow-ups.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: The overwhelm, and what could we have done more efficiently?
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: And then, to make it more efficient, what would we need to put in place?
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: What simple or easy to follow process could we put in place to make those things go faster?
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so just to give you some more examples, there was a guy I was coaching and we were working on his model week and he was the complete opposite of me.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: And he was the complete opposite of me.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: He was a morning person.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Ugh, he was a morning person.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: He was up early, bright and chipper up and at them kind of a guy.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: So he would hold all of his client meetings starting at 7.30 or 8 am and then he'd be totally done with client meetings by 12.30 or 1 o'clock.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: So then he had three hours left in his day to do whatever else.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: You know, whatever else it is that he wanted to do His planning, his file prep, you know all the things right.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And one of the final things I want you to consider too is just at the end of the week, you know, looking back saying what, what took me too long?
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Like, what took too long, what took longer than expected?
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: And that was really one of the key questions that I would ask myself.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: And when something took longer than I felt like it should have, or I felt like, ugh, why am I still doing this?
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Or gosh, why am I working on this?
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And it's taking forever, that was a sign to me that this was an area of opportunity to create a process or template, and I know I keep saying stuff like this, but like I can't drive home enough how having those in place makes you so much more efficient.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: And for your team too, right, I would ask my team all the time, like, be aware of this, what's taking longer than it should have?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: And then, how is you know?
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: As a team, can we brainstorm ways to to, just straight up, improve our processes?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Because when you're more efficient, it allows you also to be more effective.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: You have more time to do the.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: You know the extras.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: You've got more time to love on your clients.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: You have more time to send those just like hey, what's up?
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Females, you have more time to do really good prospect follow up and nurturing.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: You're not rushed, and when you're not rushed you can.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: You can deliver a better client experience hands down.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And so, and two, all week long I had kind of like a to-do system or not a to-do, but like a task system that I had created for myself and all week long I would document stuff that I'm like you know what, I think this is something that, as our team expands, or I just need to make the time to educate my team.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's the other thing with the education time.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Sometimes that was just time set aside on Thursday mornings to educate the team on something.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's a product or a service or how something works, or a sales concept or something that we were using.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, okay, back to what I was saying.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: So all week long I would say like, okay, I did this thing.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Gosh, I think that's something I could teach, so-and-so, and I would just keep this running list.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: And so it was kind of funny.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: My business coach said to me one time she was Libby, you know if you're making I don't know $350,000 running six appointments a week, isn't it logical that if you could get your appointment number up to 12, that you could be driving $700,000 of revenue.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: And I remember thinking like, oh you know, brain explosion here, mind blown Like duh, why didn't I think of that?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: She's right.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: So that was the huge motivation for me to make sure that my schedule was designed to be meeting with people, because that's where the revenue, frankly, that's where the revenue comes from.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: So her encouragement to like double my appointments in order to double my revenue, you know, really pushed me to figure out what is it that I can give away.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: And, by the way, she was totally right.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: In a two-year window we doubled our revenue by doubling the number of appointments.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I know that's kind of getting off the mat all week.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: It's related because you're wanting to make space for more appointments or more actual client things, okay.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: So I know I'm getting a little on tangents here.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I know we need to wrap up because you've got important things to do, but I want to leave you just with a reminder that it took me a very long time to get my calendar to where it was.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: It was not an overnight thing, it was definitely like a progression, but I had to really push myself to do it pretty rapidly so that I could get down to that ideal week for me and for my family and for what my business goals were and what my life goals were.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: So yours is going to look a little different and you know, having an end goal in mind is great, but know that it's just going to take some time.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: And the other thing I'll leave you with here is you know that old adage that whatever you're doing is going to take the amount of time that you give it.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: So I'll do a podcast or something here on some different strategies, but one of the main things is for me, having this limited time in my calendar to get things done forced me to get things done and you know, and you'll just kind of figure that stuff out, and you might build this thing 37 times and then go duh, I've completely forgot time in here for prospecting.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Or I forgot time.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I'm still doing my own social media.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: You just have to keep doing it and keep reiterating it.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: But I promise you, once you find a model week that works for you, you will crush it.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I'll encourage you to download the blank model week template that I've got for you and, like I said, I'll throw in there, um, my model week and a couple other iterations of model weeks from other advisors that I've coached over the years, and I just encourage you to start tracking your time and how you're spending it and really figure out where you're frankly, where you're wasting time or where you could be more efficient.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, in the spirit of efficiency, I'm going to let you go now.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Fine, but I want to jump in here at the end.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: This was a episode that I recorded gosh a couple of years ago.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It was episode number 11 of the podcast, so I just wanted to add on that.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Last week we talked about doing a time study and I gave you all the tips and tricks and great ways to actually track your time, then how to analyze it, and now we're talking about the implementation piece.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: So I got into implementation a little bit last week, but this is really kind of the culmination of it, right?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: How do we take what we learned from this time study and the inefficiencies that popped up, the trends, the themes, the common missteps, and then, hopefully, this episode will help you translate some of that data into a week that works for you.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: And I want to, of course, make sure I add on that, right, it might not be a model week for you.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: It might be a model every other week.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So now, right, as a single mom, I have two different weeks.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I have the weeks that I have my boys and I have the weeks that I don't have my boys, and I have a different model for each week.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I have some advisors that I work with that have an office in a different city and they go there once a week.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: So maybe three out of four weeks look the same and one week looks a little different.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: So you might have a model week, you might have a model month, you might have a model quarter, you might do hey, I have four weeks in a row and any month that has that fifth bonus week in it.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: That's my CEO week, or my work on the business week, or my get caught up week, or my vacation week, or whatever.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Again, just reiterating that this will look different for everybody.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: There is no one perfect model week.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: There's just the perfect model week for you.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I hope this was helpful to you guys.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: I'd love to chat more about the efficient advisor model week concept over in the community on Facebook.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: We are about 2,400 advisors large now and you guys it's just an awesome place for advice, feedback, sharing of all the things resources, tools.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: It's just super cool and, of course, as always, I would love to connect with you over on LinkedIn.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.