A FINANCIAL ADVIOSR’S GUIDE TO NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

It is once again time to start thinking about your New Year’s resolution. Often, people will set goals for personal growth, focusing on ways to improve their physical and mental well-being. But what about making resolutions for your advisory practice? More importantly making resolutions you can stick with and that will change your life for the better.

To help make 2021 your best year. We have suggested 6 New Year's resolutions for financial advisors. You may choose to adopt one—or maybe all six! The goal is to live your best life.

1) Set Incremental Goals, Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

Advisors are very familiar with the idea of compound returns. Applying the concept of compound returns to goal setting can make achieving a goal more likely. If you make a 1 percent improvement on a daily or even a weekly basis imagine the potential end result on Dec 31st, 2021. To learn more about the concept of incremental goal setting I recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Creating and committing to systemic incremental changes you are more likely to stick with and execute your plan. If you goal is to run a marathon you wouldn’t start your training by running 26 miles on day 1. You would set a daily plan training regimen and build to your 26 mile race day goal. Your goal for your practice maybe doubling your asset base by year end. Lofty goal, but achievable. Ask yourself what must be done on a daily basis to achieve that goal? Commit to your daily goal. Desmond Tutu once wisely said that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” What he meant by this is that everything in life that seems daunting, overwhelming, and even impossible can be accomplished gradually by taking on just a little at a time

2) Take Time to Make Time for Your Life

Schedule regular “me” time first, including vacations, long weekends, and decompression days. The pandemic has uniquely impacted our social scheduling. Working from home and being socially distanced may be blurring the lines between “work time” and “you time”. It is more important than ever to make your personal time a priority this year. Being present and engaged with friends, family, and self are crucial for long term wellness.

3) Let It Go, Elsa

You do not have to do EVERY task required to run your practice. Delegate! Delegate! Delegate! 

What are some good ways to do delegate?

Consider working with a strong Third-Party Asset Manager. This will unburden you from the daily grind of being a stock or mutual fund picker. You will no longer be a “slave to the tape” and be free to be a problem solver instead of product picker.

 According to noted practice management consultant Sarah Grillo – “If you want to impress really successful people, you’ve got to have it going on like Donkey Kong or they’ll wonder if you’re worth the fee. For this and many other reasons, advisors should consider outsourcing the investment management”

Consider working with an RIA aggregator. Yes, I am admittedly a little biased in this case because I work for an aggregator. However, we have seen practices grow quickly when the advisor is unshackled from operations, compliance, billing, and advanced planning model building.

According to Mark Meier, who recently shuttered his family owned, $150 million AUM RIA R. Meier to join an aggregator - “As you grow obviously the back-office commitments grow, as well as compliance and regulatory grow as well,” he said. “We started thinking, in order to be able to focus on clients and be able to keep our model, what are the alternatives. Structured independence can be the road map to a better practice and more fulfilling life without sacrificing autonomy.

Lastly, if you have a staff or partners, delegate any tasks that may be better suited to your staff's expertise or ones they have expressed an interest in spearheading. Delegation enables leaders to empower and develop their people's skills, abilities and, ultimately, passion for their jobs. Once you delegate, let them go! This subtle move will empower your staff and partners and they will thrive. You will likely gain a deeper bench of knowledge within your practice as one person cannot be an expert on everything. By the end of the year, you will be pleasantly surprised to see how they are flourishing—and how much happier both you and your partners are as a result! So, like the song says – Let It Go!

4) Reading More: Natures Way of Combining Learning and Meditation

Replace screen time with page time. Make a commitment to yourself to read 1 hour per day. The material does not have to be financial services related.

A growing body of research indicates that reading literally changes your mind. Using, MRI scans researchers have concluded that reading involves a complex network of circuits and signals in the brain. As your reading ability matures, those networks also get stronger and more sophisticated.

In one study conducted in 2013, researchers used functional MRI scans to measure the effect of reading a novel on the brain. Study participants read the novel “Pompeii” over a period of 9 days. As tension built in the story, more and more areas of the brain lit up with activity.

Brain scans showed that throughout the reading period and for days afterward, brain connectivity increased, especially in the part of the brain that responds to physical sensations like movement and pain. Pretty cool, right? Reading also has been clinically proven to:

• Reduce Stress
• Fight of Depression
• Build Vocabulary
• Increase Empathy
• Stave off Cognitive Decline.

5) Surround Yourself with Positivity

Mike Wall of Wall Private Wealth management describes this concept as improving your inputs. In 2020 the relentless media and social media coverage of the election and the pandemic created a massive negative feed back loop. The good news is you have a choice to participate in negative feedback loops or to rejoice. This is the day the Lord has made; We will rejoice and be glad in it Psalm 118:24 . Positive inputs beget positive outputs. Check out Mike’s podcast The Michael Wall Show, it is advisor centric, informative, and full of useful practice management knowledge nuggets.

6) Have Fun!

It is all too easy for you and your staff to become engrossed in the day-to-day demands of your practice. But it is important to take periodic breaks that promote your company culture. This may include a group outing, volunteering, or another event. Feel free to include your clients and prospective clients. This will demonstrate that you and your team find fun and a balanced life a worthwhile pursuit. It also helps prevent burnout and improves workplace satisfaction. Life is too short to be a bummer.

In addition to planned events, engage in fun regularly. During the pandemic we instituted a monthly “cocktails and connections” program. We send our advisors a cocktail kit and connect over Zoom. It is an informal setting that fosters collaboration between our advisers. This is an example of an opportunity to exercise fun and build a sense of community. Advisors share ideas and experiences. It has been a wildly successful program.

Making a New Year’s resolution and following through with it, is a great step toward achieving a goal and improving your life. It is just as important to focus on your business as it is your personal life. We wish you much happiness and success in this upcoming year. Together we can crush it!

Keith J Michelfelder is the Director of Business Development for Portsmouth-SmartLife Financial Group an SEC registered RIA and recognized innovator in the financial services industry. For more information on Portsmouth-SmartLife please email [email protected]