Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 179: Ideas to Implement - Michael Kitces on Time Management & Building Your Model Week

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179: Ideas to Implement - Michael Kitces on Time Management & Building Your Model Week · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: All right, you guys.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: This was one of my favorite episodes because the guest here was one of my favorite people, the one and only the man, the myth, the legend, michael Kitzis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: And, as you know, we do a longer format episode early in the week and I try to do a ideas to implement episode to just really create a follow-up episode that's short, sweet and really all about the action steps from the longer podcast.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: So my goal is every week to distill the episode down into a couple of bullet points that you can act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I want you to take what you've listened to and actually do the thing.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I am your host of the Efficient Advisor, libby Graywee.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I built a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year to lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter and, frankly, a travel-obsessed human.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I am here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and advisor ADHD.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love, and this week's episode was all things productivity, time management.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Michael and I have talked many times just in the past very informally about model weeks and how we manage our time and sort of what his journey has been from a 15-year span of absolute chaos and no structure to running a bunch of businesses and having some structure that allows him breathing room, creativity, things to not trickle over into the nighttime or into weekends, and we really just wanted to get together and do an episode all about his model week and how he manages all the things.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking for that balance between being a boss and being an advisor, and doing the planning part and doing the creative work and the business side of things and business development and wearing the seven other Azzillian hats that I know you wear, then you'll definitely wanna dig into the longer episode.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: So a couple of the takeaways that I just wanted to share or ideas to implement with you are really that he did it wrong for 15 years and I was the same way.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I did it wrong for a long time and eventually found that structure was really one of the things that actually gave me a lot of freedom when it came to my business.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Time blocking all of the typical time management techniques definitely were part of this episode, but one of the things that stuck out to me stuck out stuck out to me was obviously I don't edit my podcast, you guys, I just say whatever comes out of my mouth and I'm fine with it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that stuck out to me was this idea of themes and how he themes his days, as opposed to just time blocking.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So really in my mind it's kind of like a giant time block with a specific goal and that way his business whichever business he's working on can switch week to week.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: The content, like the actual theme, will be the same.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So certain days for creative work, certain days for team meetings and leadership stuff, certain days and I just thought that was a really helpful tool, especially for those of you that are managing multiple businesses or you have some big creative projects that you're trying to do, like a YouTube channel or a podcast, the things that are creative work, that are very, very time consuming.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Another thing that stuck out to me is that he still tracks his time on occasion to make sure and he's in alignment, and he uses somebody else to do the tracking.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's like the ultimate delegation right there.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: But having somebody else tracking your time, where they're keeping you very accountable and you can slide things past yourself right, we can talk ourselves into thinking like, oh, that was productive or oh, yep, that was time well spent, when it's actually not.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: So having somebody else do it I thought was kind of genius.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: He also mentioned that he thinks one of the biggest problems for people is not necessarily time management, but focus management, and I could not agree more Focusing, being able to focus on the right things.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I've heard it called before in other spaces high value activities, the stuff that you Don't pay, you know, somebody $20 an hour to do the work.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: That only requires your education, your you know, your experience, etc.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: But this idea that really we need to be thinking about and I think I brought up the Pareto principle in the episode, but if not, you know, it's the idea that it's that old 80 20 rule and it applies to so many things right, it applies to your book of business.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Typically, 20% of your book drives 80% of your revenue.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Same thing applies to productivity 20% of the actions that you take drive 80% of the results.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So if we can get really narrow and focus our time and energy on the things that actually move the needle in our business, we'd all see significant increase in revenue, in productivity and getting the right things done, developing our team, personal development, all the things he also, of course, brought up, narrowing down your book to the best clients and it's so much easier said than done.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: But same thing Pareto principle, starting to Remove that bottom layer of your book that is time-consuming and not necessarily producing a lot of your revenue.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And you know, michael and I've talked about this before, kind of off camera, if you will that in our perfect world every advisor would get rid of two-thirds of their clients and two-thirds of their staff and everybody would make so much More money and be so much happier.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And he mentioned it to a coaching client once you know who you are and he called me and said you know I actually ran the numbers on this, like in a couple of different ways and you're not wrong.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Like I looked at you know what different revenue points and what my team cost at those times and, you know, while my revenue is so much higher, my take-home is pretty much that.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I just I thought it was interesting that it was like that is the case, right, that my take-home was pretty much the same and, man, I'd have less headaches, less responsibilities, etc.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: And we can get into the conversation of the difference between scaling and leveraged businesses.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Right, scaling with the idea that you're trying to grow, grow, grow, with no end in sight, you want to add more Advisors, add more staff, you want to become a national brand, you want to expand into different offices, you want to grow an enterprise.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And leverage is really more along the lines of what I've done.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Right, I didn't have a desire to have a multi-advisor team with lots of people underneath us and just the stage of life that I was in during those 16 years that I was running my business, that was just not of interest to me.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Towards the end it became of interest, but really, for the vast majority, I was really just wanting to maximize the amount of revenue that I was making for every hour that I was putting into the office.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So I was really more inclined to align with this idea of leveraging.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, at model week is really important.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: That really that's like the theme of the show was Establishing a model week and ideal week, and I loved how Michael, you know, added the themes in and then talking about how your team it needs to have their own model week or their own ideal week, and that whatever works for you, of course, as the boss informs what the team's model weeks look like, but being able to help your team right part of our job as leaders is to help our team develop Professionally and personally, and so by giving them some of the tools that they you know that they can have to apply the Pareto principle to their role, right, or to just get their stuff done better, faster, smarter, cheaper or easier, right, we want to be able to do that for them as well.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Michael.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: It's always great to chat with him.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: I'd love to chat with you more out in the efficient advisor community over on Facebook or Over on LinkedIn.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much and hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.