Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 190: Ideas to Implement - Avoiding Advisor Burnout and Functioning at Your Highest Level with Guest Spencer Sherman

Transcript

190: Ideas to Implement - Avoiding Advisor Burnout and Functioning at Your Highest Level with Guest Spencer Sherman · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back.
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Each week, I want to create a follow-up episode that's short, sweet and really just all about the action, steps and highlights from this week's longer podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: So my goal is every week to distill the episode down into really just a couple of bullet points that I want you to be able to act on immediately to make a big impact in your business.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: You know how I feel If you've listened to the show for a while.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: You know how I feel about having tactical things that you can literally implement immediately.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And if you're new here, welcome.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I'm your host of the Efficient Advisor, libby Grywe.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: 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 so that I could lean into being a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, a daughter, and still have energy left over for my family.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And I am 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.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was with my new best friend, spencer Sherman, and together we kind of talked about burnout and emotional wellness for advisors and that touched on things like improving your listening skills and mindset around conversations with your clients and it was kind of hard to come back and do like, ooh, what are the highlights from this week's episode?
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: But for me it was just again kind of bringing to light this awareness that burnout is a real thing.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: It's a real thing for advisors and you know I share all the time on the episode that my uh, you know are on the podcast that my advisors the ones that tend to resonate with my story, the ones that tend to join our group coaching or hire us for individual coaching have hit a point where they are starting to just feel overwhelmed all of the time because all of the things that they wanted to come true in their business have and they're just so busy living in the tornado that is a financial planning practice and they haven't stepped back to start building out the actual business side of the business, and one of you know kind of my core philosophies is that to avoid burning out, and I was on the fast track to burnout right when I started my practice.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: If you know my story, I was working 70 or 80 hours a week.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I was able to whittle that down to 24 hours a week after having my first son.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: However, you know, I was on the fast track to burnout and had I not gotten pregnant, um, and had my first baby, I probably would have ultimately burned out.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: I think having a child was the precipice for me that forced me to really look at my business from a CEO angle of like, okay, how do I actually start scaling this thing without just working more?
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: If I actually want to work significantly less like two thirds less than I'm working now, what kind of processes and systems do I need to put in place so that I can establish scale and grab that leverage that exists only through having other people doing things inside of my business, but at the quality level that I want, to make sure we are delivering consistently?
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: So we get into, you know, um, spencer and I get into this idea of burnout, and not just burnout itself, but what it actually means long-term for you to not be living or functioning at your highest self.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: One of the things he also touched on that I thought was really interesting was letting go of your worrying mind, and most of us are financial planners right, we like to plan, we like to think about the future, and he brought up a couple of really good points about how we're constantly worrying about.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: You know, is this client going to sign on with us?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Is the market going to be okay?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Am I saying the right thing?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Am I doing the right thing?
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Is my process you know my financial planning process the most appealing?
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: You know we worry so much and what that does to us and how we can let go of a worrying mind and some of the practices that he teaches advisors on how to actually let go of that worrying mind and to be fully present in whatever it is that you're doing.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And so I think Spencer gave us the example of you know, even in a client meeting, when you're not necessarily fully hearing everything that they're saying, because you're worrying about what's the next thing that's going to come out of your mouth to impress them, to move them forward down the process with you, and how this idea of being fully present.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: The by-product of that is establishing massive trusts.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: The other highlight for me is we got into this idea and you've maybe heard me talk about it before but we started talking and what Spencer was saying was basically this idea that I've shared before of being a client's Sherpa versus a guru.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: And the idea here is, like I you know, when I first started my business, I thought I was the guru, right, I was the smartest person in the room.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: They gave me all of the paperwork, I ran it up to the mountaintop and I came back down with my recommendations and presented to them the here's what you should do's of the financial planning world.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I realized that my role was more of that of a Sherpa as opposed to a guru, right, someone who was going to be doing the hike with them and guiding them along the way, but going at the pace that worked for them within their skill level, within their knowledge level, and working alongside them.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And Spencer gave us this idea of asking some of these catalytic questions to really help clients get to their own answers.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Because when our clients come up with their own answers of, hey, I need to be saving more, hey, I need to be.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: You know, doing this or doing that differently it hits different and it has a more effective or more profound impact on our clients willingness to do the thing, when it's kind of like their idea, versus us coming down from the mountaintop with the paperwork and saying, hey, you need to save more money.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Spencer also got into this idea of listening skills and some of these ways that we can engage our clients through repeating back to them, through checking in with them, through brevity and asking them what level of understanding that they're looking for.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: So I thought this was really a great point.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: When a client asks a question, spencer said he liked to ask clients like do you want me to give you the 30 second version of the answer to that or do you want the five minute version of that?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Because often, as the smartest person in the room right, we like to overshare or answer our clients' questions fully and express so much knowledge and kind of pouring into them Like here's the background of why the IRS does it this way and blah, blah, blah.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And he was saying sometimes our clients just want the 30 second version and we're losing them if we're giving the five minute.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: You know, giant explanation.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: The last thing I want to touch on that I think is really important, and I'm like totally applying this to all areas of my life.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: You know, the older I get my so it's the month of May, it's my birthday month I'll be 42 this month and the older I get, the more I realize that I have to fight having a very reactive brain, and so Spencer talked a lot about cultivating a mind that is less reactive, and this is true in all areas of life.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Right, every action does not necessarily require a reaction, but how can we implement that inside of our business?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And how, then, can not being so reactive give us more peace, more calm and ultimately drive us towards less overwhelm, less burnout, you know, less stress and frustration, and really, you know we talk about it all the time like building that business that you love, which supports a life that you love.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: So I'd love for you to take a listen to this long episode from Tuesday, the long format episode, and I'd love to know what your takeaways were.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: And if you are one of those advisors who are kind of like on the verge of burnout and you live in a constant state of overwhelm where you're playing catch up on nights and weekends.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I would invite you to check out the systems to scale group coaching program that we do here at the efficient Pfizer.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Our next round doesn't launch till August, um, but it might be something for you to hop on the wait list and see if it might be a good fit for you, because a big piece for me, in addition to all of this awesome goal setting and mindset work that Spencer's talking about, is really building those systems and processes inside of your business that allow you to work more efficiently in order to scale your practice, in order to set better boundaries for yourself and to be able to accomplish whatever you want for your business success-wise, within whatever boundaries and limitations and parameters that you're giving yourself personally.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, um would love for you to check that out.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: You can go to the coaching page of the efficient advisorcom or you can check out the show notes for the link and, as you know, I love to hang out in the efficient advisor community over on Facebook and also on LinkedIn.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Find me there for additional content.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.