Principles of Successful Financial Advisors

who are the advisors that that find success and find the growth that they're looking for and then versus those who might struggle I remember a lesson Dave I looked at the front row and there was an advisor sitting there notebook open just scribbling those this advisor had brought in over 300 million the prior year and I've just found the most successful advisors and that I've crossed paths with the last 15 years they have that mindset if you want to scale any business of substance it flips from a solo player game to a multiplayer game what advice would you give to an advisor when's the right time to hire who do you hire the EA role is the number one missing role in all of Finance so the biggest sleep is from financial advisor to business owner you now have to look at it as a business so now I have divisions I have a marketing division that's the before that manufactures the appointments I have sales which is the during the conversion process I have Ops which is the after which is falling through on the Promises we make the plans we build it's not lack of intention it's lack of execution it gets you in trouble so Brad you get to talk to uh and really coach a lot of different advisors you've done that you've done it for years how can you think of either character traits or or maybe personality traits or just um or actions who are the advisors that that find success and find the growth that they're looking for and then versus those who might struggle can you think of the differences between the two yes so here's the here's what comes to mind Dave um the first place I would start is mindset um the biggest difference between the advisors that have success and it's consistent year over year versus hey I just had a stellar year and then kind of went back to you know Baseline um it's a mindset of continuing to grow one of the things we say at Triad is and one of the ways we curate our community here who are top Achievers by by revenue and by volume in the independent financial advisor space we say we check our egos at the door no one has ever arrived we're all lifelong Learners I don't care if you've got 100 million under management 500 million under management a billion five billion we're all still growing and learning and on this journey as a human together and I I remember a lesson Dave this has been a number of years back but I was at an advisor conference and there was an advisor on stage sharing some best practices and they might have brought in like five million of new assets the prior year which is great you know that's that's a good number for a lot of advisors and um I looked at the front row um and there was an advisor sitting there notebook open just scribbling notes this advisor had brought in over 300 million the prior year wow and they were voraciously taking notes down from an advisor that had done final a fraction of what they had produced the prior year and the quote you know when the student is ready the teacher will appear I found that to be so true um and you can learn something from everyone um and I've just found the most successful advisors that I've crossed paths with the last 15 years they have that mindset they're constantly growing they're constantly evolving their ego and by the way I've seen it work the other way too Dave where the ego grows as the production goes and you know what happens almost like magic it's it's not a good thing they'll hit this ceiling of complexity um oftentimes the advisor that's the solo advisor that like kind of grinds their way to that 30 40 50 million a year and then they can't evolve to leader and business owner that can Empower a team that can bring on great talent they cap out and it's the most frustrating thing in the world because it's like they figured out the game it's like a video game where they pass one level but then they can't figure out the next level the level you get stuck on I've seen that happen so many times because they stopped growing and evolving and Leadership and building a culture that attracts great talent that's not a natural you're not just gifted with that and um the advisors that continue to grow and evolve and you know it's not a big enough dream if it doesn't require a team that's something we'd say around here a lot and to build anything of substance a generational sort of business you're gonna have to have a story that attracts great talent and then you're gonna have to learn how to treat them right and keep them around or it's always going to come back to you and that no advisor wants the weight of all of the revenue on their shoulders from my experience they want to be able to actually go on vacation unplug with the family and it's a beautiful thing when Revenue continues to flow in when you're on vacation and you know takes a team to do that that's super super interesting so if we think about this the journey that a lot of advisors go on which is yes they're solo they're figuring it out they're getting uh the knowledge right they're studying they're getting a certain uh the letters after their names and then they're doing it and growing a business and then yeah they get to this point you know everything's going great and then there's that first wall and if they do nothing about it it's almost like I'm picturing like the line graph going up and then if they do nothing when they hit this wall it's just going to go down and it's those ones at that point or earlier who figure out how do you know when is the right time what advice would you give to an advisor when's the right time to hire who do you hire how do you get I've talked to advisors who say you know I've thought about hiring an assistant to a virtual assistant but I I just don't want to pay for for that person how what do you what's the advice for someone who's who's at that level the first quote that comes to mind by the way I did not coin this quote so I'm borrowing it from somebody else um if you don't have an assistant you are the assistant and there's no disrespect to assistance out there because I mean Brooke that's my EA she's world-class talent I I can she's an executive assistant she's on the org chart she is beside me and um Michael Hyatt who I've done a lot of private coaching with um his I we were asked Sean my business partner and I were in a private coaching session we said hey if you had to go back because he he ran Thomas Nelson so for those not familiar with him he ran uh one of the top 10 book publishing companies in the country publicly traded thousand plus employees published all of Dave Ramsey's books John Maxwell's books I mean these are his personal friends so he's you know kind of been surrounded by thought leadership his entire career he left that to go start full focus and grew a team eight figure Revenue income very quickly and with I think a team of 40 or 50 now we said who would your first hire be like without hesitation he said Nea an executive assistant he said because my time is my most valuable asset and if I don't have somebody controlling my time and my calendar I'm not going to be allocating that time wisely and so when to answer your question is yesterday because if you look at how the analogy we use a lot in the coaching at Triad is you know you look at other business models and apply lessons from those to the world of Finance I'll tell you what McDonald's is a hell of a case study the most successful franchise in the history of franchises and if you compare a financial advisor if it was like a McDonald's well back in the day when there had to be a human there to take your order now you can just do it on the punch screen but back in the day the only way McDonald's made money is if there was a paying customer across the cash register from them that's similar to most financial advisors the only way you're driving Revenue in a financial services firm is if you've got a Potential Prospect with money across the table from you or across the zoom from you depending on your model well essentially at the simplest form any activity that takes a financial advisor away from the cash register away from that meeting is decreasing the revenue to the firm at the base level at the beginner level um and so oftentimes advisors are are doing their own paperwork they're building their own plans they're the janitor they're they're making the coffee in the morning so any of those activities because we all have the finite resource of time that take you out of Revenue producing activities hurt your firm and many of the firms we coach it starts with the founding advisor the partners that found out the firm that's cash register one and then the next one is service appointments but so if you have any amount of success now you have to withhold promises to clients because now you have a growing book of business well if you look at your calendar and by the way I've seen many advisors like I I can't do an appointment for two weeks I'm like well let's look at your calendar and all it is is reviews so basically that would be like a McDonald's where the entire line behind the register is refills free refills on the cola right because these customers have already paid per se and now you just have a line of service work and obviously as a fiduciary as you know anybody that runs a great financial services practice you have to withhold promises or uphold promises I should say and so now the service advisor model can actually help you because you think about it Dave if you're sitting there doing appointments all day and you've got an inbox that hasn't been answered if you've got voicemail you know light blinking on your phone you're actually a horrible service advisor already so the fact that you hire a service advisor that can proactively communicate quicker the client experience elevates but back to the cash register analogy now you actually don't have to leave the cash register as a selling advisor you can continue to do transactions which drives Revenue which creates cash flow to hire a bigger team so now you can have a service advisor you can have a planning team the other thing you think about imagine if you went to a McDonald's you order a Big Mac and the guy behind the cash register says hey just a second I'll be right back back and walks off to make the Big Mac you'd be like what kind of operation are they running here you know this isn't very efficient yeah do it all the time in finance because that's the advisor that goes and builds their own plans and nothing against that there's some world-class like very you know cfp CFA designations but I will say if your goal is to grow Revenue and help more people any activity that takes you away from cash register or meeting Hertz the productivity of a financial services firm so that's why many one of the things we coach on is there's actually three types of advisors there's a selling or relationship advisor that's the one meaning the cash register there's a service advisor the one loving on and carrying on the clients and upholding all the promises and monitoring the financial plan there's a planning advisor that might be a little more analytical kind of think CFA engineer mindset they're the one in the back by the way if they focus on that they're building much more world-class plans than you could ever build being a part-time planning advisor in a full-time selling advisor so that's just a couple I mean there you can continue to dissect that all throughout the financial services firm but that's the first thing that comes to mind Dave on like the timing of this stuff yeah so some of the the to sum it up a few of the what are they actually going to be doing calendar email were two big ones right someone who is replying on your behalf or as the assistant that seemed like two big things if that takes up a lot of time just that because I'm thinking like for the person who did who was hesitant who is hesitant uh you don't have to hire a 40 hour per hour per week person right you could find the eava virtual assistant that has a few things right um but I I heard it put once Dave to look at the stuff you you absolutely dread actually Dan Sullivan uh we just talked about in the podcast interview we just did Dan Sullivan um I love this that I took from him he said what if procrastination was a form of wisdom and so think about your desk and like the pile of paperwork that always piles up on the advisor's desk why is that because you hate doing it it's like the I will do that when it's the last thing I have to do well if procrastination was a form of wisdom look at those things that you dread that are always the last thing you do if you could write a check and never do that again the rest of your life and actually just stop there you'd be happier you'd probably show up at home better you'd have less on your mind but the truth is you write a check and never have to do that again now that actually frees up time back to the cash register analogy where I can actually see more people and so it not only do you get rid of the things you don't like doing but you free up time to do the things that you love doing and drive more revenue and on the EA front I heard it put one time as well email is someone else's to-do list so if you come in and all you do is bombarded by emails all day basically you've dedicated your time each day to doing other people's to-do list versus your versus your own to-do list and so a great EA inbox management um it's Brook School who's my EA that I have five emails or less to answer per day so she will literally answer on my behalf she'll say hey Brad's in a meeting do you mind if I hop in and help you out in the meantime nine out of ten people like heck yeah I'm getting faster help here one out of ten like hey yeah just get this to Brad when he has a moment so now that's the one you need to personally answer so inbox management calendaring um do business do life you know the podcast that we do here that's our mission at Triad we want to do business and do life that's integration not balance is the way we view it she coordinates with my wife Sarah so before I commit to you know say we have a a client dinner flying in she is going to check with the home front hey are there any ball games that night I got myself in trouble so many times Dave where I just over commit we're Enneagram sevens we we've got fear missing out we want to be at every party and so I would over commit and then I would just feel so guilty because I'm like oh now I'm gonna either disappoint the person that I already committed to or I'm going to miss a ball game and I just was constantly torn think of a great EA as air traffic control for business and life and coordinating that making sure you're showing up at the right place at the right time so inbox management uh calendar management which I mean those two things right there by themselves could be a full-time job um also bookkeeping so you think about um hey I went out I needed to submit this receipt list lunch receipt as a business expense Brooke handles all of that where she's going to monitor those and get those to the accounting team so those are the the three real big ones and by the way I learned all of that from the guy that wrote the book on it Michael Hyatt I've borrowed many of his uh Frameworks for that what is that book uh it actually he wrote a book I think it's called like be a world-class assistant um he wrote that and then his I'm trying to I think they're actually work him and Jim Jim says he a they're they're working on a course I don't know if it'll be live by the time this hits the internet but I think he's doing a course on it too but yeah he wrote a book be a world-class assistant or something like that okay awesome um so uh one other one other tip uh belay b-e-l-a-y um great company uh that was how I found Brooke so she started out as 20 hours a week the cool thing is you can grow into this if this is new to you as an advisor so Brooke started out at 20 and then eventually it's like I need to be at 40 and then the way belay works it's almost like a head hunting firm I actually bought her out of her contract so it's a great way to test the concept get used to the concept and then if you find the right person where you've got that chemistry um can actually hire them on full time and Brooke I'm here in Lawrence Kansas she's in Atlanta she'll she'll see like if I've got meetings running through lunch Chipotle will just show up at the door and she's like hey so you had meetings running through lunch and uh so I went ahead and got you Chipotle and oh that's one other that's one other tool um so there's a worksheet I got from Michael Heidi calls it an executive summary all it is is an Excel dock it's basically your life on a spreadsheet so it's frequent flyer number numbers Hotel Marriott numbers like if I'm traveling where do I want to stay how do I want to get there how do I take my coffee you know what are the local places that I would order lunch from and exactly how my order would be my wife's name my wife's birthday my kids names my my kids birthdays anniversaries um one of his sayings is it's not lack of intention it's lack of execution that gets you in trouble and so Jim and Brooke on my behalf like my wife's 40th birthday is coming up big birthday I literally have been that guy it's like oh shoot my wife's birthday is tomorrow because I've been so busy now I have somebody proactively looking out on the family calendar hey don't forget your wife's birthday is coming up in a month have you thought about a birthday present where's your birthday party going to be at what do you want to do where do you want to have it at date night what restaurant do you want to try so it's just like the work life integration really being proactive and looking out in advance in the future and just making sure you prioritize what you want to prioritize in life yeah I think that's awesome I I think Dave the EA role is the number one missing role in all of Finance you look at any Fortune 500 CEO they all have an executive assistant you look at any top performing financial advisor in our space almost none of them have an executive assistant I think it's the number one Gap in most Financial Services firms wow I love the what you said belay you recommended them to me I'm using them as well um so and it's been it's been excellent so now were you able to on the on the first was the first hire the one or did you go through a couple before you found the right one currently is the one right now awesome it's only been a few months but it's already and then you you figure out stuff that you wouldn't have thought about unless you actually had someone who was there to support you and to take some of these things off your plate so if you can't think of things that they would do now which I'm sure you can you know if you're listening to this uh there's even more that comes up when you hire somebody um so now let's go back okay solo person here's this hires the EA or the VA and they're doing 20 10 hours a week and they're they're taking some of these big things on a do not do list taken over freeing up time but then there's this this thing that you got to do which is people management most advisors you don't get into the business to do people management some are good at it I'm horrible at it um and then as you continue if you continue to grow then you've got this group of people and you want to make sure everyone's doing the right thing and things are moving forward and you become almost like a project manager if you're the if you work solo and now you've got a group and then this idea of culture comes into play and all these new things which for a lot of people it's like well I didn't really sign up for that I want to talk to people and help them with their their finances and help them make good financial decisions how that's to me it seems like a hard transition do you have any advice when it comes to this idea of maybe it's leadership leadership and management two different things maybe it's making sure everyone's on the same you know rowing in the same direction vision what's your advice to someone who is now they've crossed that first barrier and they're almost still going down because now they're training people uh they're they're writing processes and systems what's your advice for that person to get to the next level of working with a team oh there's just so many places to go with that um it is it is a common struggle um it's actually it's you know the book what got you here won't get you there it's that that that that is it's so I see it over and over and it's super frustrating to a lot of advisors because it's almost you hit this ceiling of complexity and you're not sure how to break through to the next level so um in simplest form if you want to scale any business of substance it as a successful financial advisor it flips from a slow player game to a multiplayer game and the tough part about being a great financial advisor is almost every single advisor I've ever met in life started out as a solo game in fact most of them got horrible training um kind of thrown in the deep end and they were the one that didn't drown everybody else in their class 20 50 100 everybody else is like out they're washed out of the business they were the one that figured it out they grinded their way through it they problem solved their way through it they were a survivor and what's so tough is the moment you flip over and you have to start empowering a team it's so frustrating when the advisor that's been doing this 10 15 20 years has all this knowledge in their brain by the School of Hard Knocks and they have to slow down they have to watch somebody blow a couple sales fall on their face skin their knees and not lose their mind and have a calm demeanor about it it's like parenting Dave right and if you want your kids to be anything in life they're gonna have to stumble a few times along the way they're gonna have to build the character and you have to be patient and you're gonna have to allow that to happen and so that's kind of the first mindset you have to you have to start with patience and empathy and go back to that time when you were the 20-something-year-old advisor just getting into it and realize like they're not going to come into it with the same skill set that you did 20 years later the second thing that comes to mind you mentioned it vision no one can follow anyone that doesn't know where they're going or if they do you're all going to be scattered running all over the place and it's going to be Whirlwind of chaos every day and so taking a second um we typically coach on three years it's long enough out there that you can make dramatic changes but it's not so far out it's unattainable and so we work and we coach on a three-year vision and really clarifying what that looks like and if you think about it like we were just out in Vegas together think about like the Vegas Strip for those that have been there you can look out you can see you know the Caesars or or you know the kind of notable uh casinos and you're not exactly sure how far down it is but you know hey if I just keep walking in that direction I'll get there eventually that's a great vision you don't have to have the how you're going to get there in fact a great vision you shouldn't have the house it should be aspirational it should be we're not exactly sure how we're going to get there but we're going to find a way we're going to empower a team we're going to all work together for the collective goal of the vision so Vision alignment then how do you align the team to execute on that then execution most Financial Services firms it's execute execute execute Whirlwind Whirlwind Whirlwind appointments appointments chaos oh shoot we didn't hit our goal for this year oh we uh had five people quit on this and then they wonder why well nobody knew where they were going it wasn't a compelling vision look Elon Musk the one thing that guy knows how to do I'm not saying I agree with all of his work practices and his hiring and firing and all that but I will tell you what the guy knows how to do he knows how to create a compelling Vision we're going to Mars we're we're building a rocket that's reusable we're building sustainable uh Transportation with Tesla he knows how to create a compelling vision and the right people join that the people that aren't scared of working 100 hours work but they are going to get a person to Mars that's who's at SpaceX right now and so it starts there and then the culture side of it there's one other thing our industry tends to look at the team as an expense versus an investment and if you look at building a team like Dave if I'm like man this guy's pretty good at what he does he crushes it on YouTube he's a pretty intelligent guy I think he builds great financial plans for for his client man I'd love to have Dave on the team the only way I'm going to get a Dave solar is if I have a compelling vision and then I have a culture that attracts great talent and great humans and I pay them incredibly well I have great benefits you look at most Financial Services firms when they're small they have no 401K they have no match they have no health care it's literally like look at any Baseline business out there benefits you need to be that should be the minimum is Healthcare some sort of retirement plan some sort of match some sort of you know vacation package and then if you want to hire great talent they're already working somewhere they already have a great job they're probably getting loved on by their current company because they don't want to lose them and so you have to look at acquiring great talent this is one of the things I've learned at Triad we've gone from 0 to 60 team members in about two and a half years screwed a lot up along the way but one thing we've learned no different than you need to if you're going to acquire clients to your firm go from Prospect to client you need to have great marketing and then you need to have a great process that attracts them that your firm is better than the one they're at or the one down the street I see so many advisors that are incredibly gifted at that with their own clients and then they suck at that with their own team what's really interesting is many of the same Dynamics there actually apply to a team you need to sell a great team member on here's why our place is better than where you're at here's the competitive package we're going to invest into you um great talent you should be 10 20 above Market you know if this role is a 50k roll industry-wide in your Marketplace you're going to need by the way that person that's already at a firm and already happy they're not making a lateral move human psychology does not like change so if you're offering 50k which is exactly what they're making with a similar benefits package you are never going to get that individual if you are now at 60k with a compelling vision and here's where we're going and we want to invest in you and we want to Career track not a job where you can grow once you're inside of this firm okay now that person perks up their head I'm like huh 10K pay raise oh I have a career you know maybe it's marketing so if you look at your business sorry I'm just fire hosing here but I'm just giving you my stream of Consciousness so the biggest sleep is from financial advisor to business owner you now have to look at it as a business so now I have divisions I have a marketing division that's the before that manufactures the appointments I have sales which is the during the conversion process I have Ops which is the after which is following through on the Promises we make the plans we build um so now I need who's I go from tasks like hey Dave will you do this oh what should I do that's the constraint if Dave is the advisor in charge every task has to run through Dave if I move into phase two which is business owner Now Dave invests in great talent talent and marketing sales Ops typically the last Division and advisor leaves is sales because they're they're the one making mistakes but you might have a director of marketing now I'm going to go from task delegation to I've got a person that I've empowered to have a responsibility over the marketing we use a framework called 1080 10. the front 10 is the ideation which would be Dave the founder meeting with person responsible for marketing hey I'm thinking we might want to do some dinner seminars why don't you look at some local venues that are within 30 minutes of our office and let's you know they need to be kind of upper level risk risk level let's see what they are and bring those back now you've delegated responsibility they're doing the middle 80 which is the work so front 10 ideation middle 80 percent them empowering them here's the missing piece for most advisors last 10 quality control this is why people get scared to delegate because they're like I get I gave them the task and then they were hosting the next seminar you know that I don't know the the buffet like what are the Golden Canyon or whatever they're called Coyote Canyon so because there was no quality control on the back yet where you basically check their work and so that last 10 is like okay I like these two let's get dates set okay cool and then after a few iterations of that now it's just a system and a business and so that's kind of that second phase is move into business owner which is empowering and investing in great team and talent and then getting the hell out of their way honestly that's what Ron Carson told me said number one thing that's contributed to my success is I hire great people and I get the hell out of their way I love that that 1080 10. that's super helpful you said an advisor and then kind of graduating to business owner I want to ask about the do you know any advisors do you have any stories of advisors who know that the the kind of paths two paths they can take but they don't want to be the business owner do they end up hiring the CEO or do they is that an option for people or do you just stay the solo and you have a small team and that's good you know what I mean like what if you don't want to be a business owner yeah so there's a few Frameworks out there so the short answer is yesterday um and that's what I love that's one of the things that just that's why I've never gotten tired of this business there's so much freedom to build a business that suits you and serves you in this space like look at your store you're like I started creating YouTube videos you came up with a unique marketing funnel that served you and how you wanted to build a firm and guess what some people like I hate doing YouTube videos they're not going to do that um so here are the four phases of scale that we coach to there's the advisor in charge model which is typically where you start you're the solo practitioner surrounded by a bunch of assistants right like very generalized roles the second phase is business first or business owner we now divide the business into an actual business with a marketing division a sales Division and Ops division you can now start to hire leaders in each of those divisions typically like a director of marketing a director of Ops you mentioned like most advisors do not like Personnel great sales people tend to have not great follow-through not great like accountability and so you have to hire your compliments your differences are your strengths in business so so in Colby that would be a high follow through where most advisors are high quick starts if you're good sales people um so you might hire a high attention to detail that handles a lot of the Personnel to free you up for sales the third phase is CEO um and so phase one we delegate tasks phase two we delegate responsibility phase three we delegate the thinking to where now kind of a COO level they're thinking about the Ops they're coming and bringing ideas to you ideally they're a specialist in this with the track record of doing this before and so now as CEO and we'll get to like if you don't want to be CEO in a second CEOs are responsible for vision for the team where we're headed and inspiration like it's kind of the um the Mel Gibson Braveheart scene where he's got his face open and he's in front of the group riding a horse it's like that's a great CEO it's like an inspiring vision that people want to follow Doo is more the day-to-day execution and then phase four is board member where I have shares in the company but I do not have to show up on a daily basis and so where I've seen to your question where founding advisors can kind of pick their own path I've got an advisor we've got an advisor in Chicago we work with he'll bring it their firm will bring in north of 200 million this year organically they're not buying firms and rolling them up and so back to Marketing sales Ops most advisors where they leave last is sales because they're responsible for the revenue right they're they're meeting with clients and you know some founding advisors will bump their minimums to a million two million three million they've got an advisor team that maybe see the lower ones but if you want to remove yourself like Anthony did the advisor up in Chicago he actually wanted to rain make that was what he loved he loved the marketing similar to what you're doing right now Dave you're Rand making through YouTube you're you're generating appointments for a team that was his unique desire that was what kind of brought him Joy he's the TV guy he's the YouTube guy he's the seminar guy which by the way he's got a family his seminar speaking days he just retrofits his day he takes the whole morning off he does breakfast with his kids he drives them to school because a lot of seminars they'll be like I'm not missing family dinners that's why I don't do seminars he's like the most valuable hour he makes about forty thousand dollars of Revenue every time he speaks every hour because of the ROI of talking with an audience full of qualified people so it's one of the most valuable things he can do on a daily basis so he just retrofit his day so we're on seminar nights he might hit the spa he takes he hangs with the kids in the morning drives them to school so he doesn't have this guilt of like I'm sacrificing my family to build this business he just he just retrofits it and then he looks forward you know what could it make possible if you actually looked forward to seminar days and so he changed his seminar routine and day to where those are some of his favorite days he loves speaking in front of an audience he goes and crushes it and it's one of the most valuable things he could do to drive Revenue to the firm and then he's got a guy named Brian on his team all he does he owns the sales division so Anthony is making it rain appointments onto the calendar Brian all he does is he's their head sales guy he did north of 100 million I think it was like 108 Million last year of new assets gathered by one individual on the team because back to the cash register analogy all Brian did was set up the cash register all day he has no service work he has no planning no follow through he just sits and connects all day long every day and so when you start to so you go from generalist in the advisor in charge model to specialist and what Anthony's developed is a specialist in that role and in many other roles in his firm which by the way if you're going to build and attract a great team and a great culture and great talent great talent wants a career not a job so hey inside of our firm you start here and then here's the next step and the next step and you could if you do really well get up to here and by running this like a business not like a financial advisor you actually start to build these career tracks inside of your firm where people like oh cool there's opportunity there that sounds like a good opportunity that I'm willing to to jump from where I'm at wow this is exciting this is great great stuff at least for me super valuable well hey Fred hey back to your YouTube like if it's only you cool mission accomplished so yes no there's going to be a lot there's a lot of advisors um on streamline my practice that are gonna they're gonna love this um we've got two minutes can you summarize in two minutes you you've got do business do life family is is above work right a lot of it's easy to get burnt out especially if you love what you do it's easy to work and and work and always be thinking about work how do you focus on your family how do you be that Dad and also be a successful entrepreneur and advisor what's it just a framework or idea or tip well first off I've screwed all this up along the way Dave so um nobody's perfect at this and anybody that says they are is lying to you um there is no manual for being the world's best husband or the world's best dad um but I think it starts with intention and almost I think universally every advisor that I've ever talked with that is married that has kids or someday hopes to to you know have kids they all have the intent but the intent the way I try to live life is by Design not by default and back to I don't know how you'll slice and dice this video but somewhere along the way we just talked about an EA um what gets calendar gets done and so one of the things we do in my family um there's there's actually I think I've heard this story the first time in Sunday school growing up um it was maybe you heard it Dave it was the parable of where there's this this empty picture and you know this guy puts these rocks in it and he says it's the picture full and the kid says yes it's like oh okay and then he takes some sand and he pours it in the picture he says how about now and the kid like kind of double takes and he's like well yeah now it's full then he takes some water and he pours it in the picture and the truth is a lot of advisors that I've seen that get to kind of red line burn out just lack of balance the way their calendar works is all of that stuff that's poured into the calendar is business first and so what we do at the Johnson house once a year my wife and I it's around September November we sit down with Brooke my EA we look out over the coming year and we say we put the big rocks in first and the big rocks are family the big rocks are birthdays scripts the stuff that matters that is way more important than anything business related and now we pour the sand in the sand could represent the business calendar and that works around the big rocks it doesn't we don't do the sand first and then try to jam big rocks in them that's one of the things I've seen a lot of advisors they try to cram the big rocks in after the business is on the calendar it just doesn't work and so I think it just starts with intention it starts with screwing a few things up and you create systems I've tried to just surround myself with just people that are further down the path than me guys like Michael Hyatt that are super intentional and what I love is like he's he's told me the like Michael when I sat down with me it's like there's a point he has five daughters he was the CEO of Thomas Nelson he said I was literally on the verge of divorce because my wife sat me down and said I feel like I'm a single mom and this is a guy that's like such a great human and so intentional and so I just know like if he's gone down past of messing this up everyone has and so you just try to get people in your life that you can learn from that are great mentors that are people that you aspire to be like and you just ask them and I found that most of them are really generous humans that just share everything and uh so that's that's a few thoughts that could be that could be a full day conversation Dave but that's a few thoughts from my side oh it's so helpful Brad thank you thanks for sharing that wisdom super helpful I'm glad you're in my life you're one of those guys that you just mentioned um yeah advisors are going to love this thanks for being on the show hey likewise Dave uh I've learned a lot from you as well so great to be connected with you thanks for all you're doing out there for advisors to help them level up in business and life and uh yeah hope this helps a few advisors out there and uh always down for another conversation so just let me know awesome awesome thanks Brad

who are the advisors that that find success and find the growth that they&#39;re looking for and then versus those who might struggle I remember a lesson Dave I looked at the front row and there was an advisor sitting there notebook open just scribbling those this advisor had brought in over 300 million the prior year and I&#39;ve just found the most successful advisors and that I&#39;ve crossed paths with the last 15 years they have that mindset if you want to scale any business of substance it flips from a solo player game to a multiplayer game what advice would you give to an advisor when&#39;s the right time to hire who do you hire the EA role is the number one missing role in all of Finance so the biggest sleep is from financial advisor to business owner you now have to look at it as a business so now I have divisions I have a marketing division that&#39;s the before that manufactures the appointments I have sales which is the during the conversion process I have Ops which is the after which is falling through on the Promises we make the plans we build it&#39;s not lack of intention it&#39;s lack of execution it gets you in trouble so Brad you get to talk to uh and really coach a lot of different advisors you&#39;ve done that you&#39;ve done it for years how can you think of either character traits or or maybe personality traits or just um or actions who are the advisors that that find success and find the growth that they&#39;re looking for and then versus those who might struggle can you think of the differences between the two yes so here&#39;s the here&#39;s what comes to mind Dave um the first place I would start is mindset um the biggest difference between the advisors that have success and it&#39;s consistent year over year versus hey I just had a stellar year and then kind of went back to you know Baseline um it&#39;s a mindset of continuing to grow one of the things we say at Triad is and one of the ways we curate our community here who are top Achievers by by revenue and by volume in the independent financial advisor space we say we check our egos at the door no one has ever arrived we&#39;re all lifelong Learners I don&#39;t care if you&#39;ve got 100 million under management 500 million under management a billion five billion we&#39;re all still growing and learning and on this journey as a human together and I I remember a lesson Dave this has been a number of years back but I was at an advisor conference and there was an advisor on stage sharing some best practices and they might have brought in like five million of new assets the prior year which is great you know that&#39;s that&#39;s a good number for a lot of advisors and um I looked at the front row um and there was an advisor sitting there notebook open just scribbling notes this advisor had brought in over 300 million the prior year wow and they were voraciously taking notes down from an advisor that had done final a fraction of what they had produced the prior year and the quote you know when the student is ready the teacher will appear I found that to be so true um and you can learn something from everyone um and I&#39;ve just found the most successful advisors that I&#39;ve crossed paths with the last 15 years they have that mindset they&#39;re constantly growing they&#39;re constantly evolving their ego and by the way I&#39;ve seen it work the other way too Dave where the ego grows as the production goes and you know what happens almost like magic it&#39;s it&#39;s not a good thing they&#39;ll hit this ceiling of complexity um oftentimes the advisor that&#39;s the solo advisor that like kind of grinds their way to that 30 40 50 million a year and then they can&#39;t evolve to leader and business owner that can Empower a team that can bring on great talent they cap out and it&#39;s the most frustrating thing in the world because it&#39;s like they figured out the game it&#39;s like a video game where they pass one level but then they can&#39;t figure out the next level the level you get stuck on I&#39;ve seen that happen so many times because they stopped growing and evolving and Leadership and building a culture that attracts great talent that&#39;s not a natural you&#39;re not just gifted with that and um the advisors that continue to grow and evolve and you know it&#39;s not a big enough dream if it doesn&#39;t require a team that&#39;s something we&#39;d say around here a lot and to build anything of substance a generational sort of business you&#39;re gonna have to have a story that attracts great talent and then you&#39;re gonna have to learn how to treat them right and keep them around or it&#39;s always going to come back to you and that no advisor wants the weight of all of the revenue on their shoulders from my experience they want to be able to actually go on vacation unplug with the family and it&#39;s a beautiful thing when Revenue continues to flow in when you&#39;re on vacation and you know takes a team to do that that&#39;s super super interesting so if we think about this the journey that a lot of advisors go on which is yes they&#39;re solo they&#39;re figuring it out they&#39;re getting uh the knowledge right they&#39;re studying they&#39;re getting a certain uh the letters after their names and then they&#39;re doing it and growing a business and then yeah they get to this point you know everything&#39;s going great and then there&#39;s that first wall and if they do nothing about it it&#39;s almost like I&#39;m picturing like the line graph going up and then if they do nothing when they hit this wall it&#39;s just going to go down and it&#39;s those ones at that point or earlier who figure out how do you know when is the right time what advice would you give to an advisor when&#39;s the right time to hire who do you hire how do you get I&#39;ve talked to advisors who say you know I&#39;ve thought about hiring an assistant to a virtual assistant but I I just don&#39;t want to pay for for that person how what do you what&#39;s the advice for someone who&#39;s who&#39;s at that level the first quote that comes to mind by the way I did not coin this quote so I&#39;m borrowing it from somebody else um if you don&#39;t have an assistant you are the assistant and there&#39;s no disrespect to assistance out there because I mean Brooke that&#39;s my EA she&#39;s world-class talent I I can she&#39;s an executive assistant she&#39;s on the org chart she is beside me and um Michael Hyatt who I&#39;ve done a lot of private coaching with um his I we were asked Sean my business partner and I were in a private coaching session we said hey if you had to go back because he he ran Thomas Nelson so for those not familiar with him he ran uh one of the top 10 book publishing companies in the country publicly traded thousand plus employees published all of Dave Ramsey&#39;s books John Maxwell&#39;s books I mean these are his personal friends so he&#39;s you know kind of been surrounded by thought leadership his entire career he left that to go start full focus and grew a team eight figure Revenue income very quickly and with I think a team of 40 or 50 now we said who would your first hire be like without hesitation he said Nea an executive assistant he said because my time is my most valuable asset and if I don&#39;t have somebody controlling my time and my calendar I&#39;m not going to be allocating that time wisely and so when to answer your question is yesterday because if you look at how the analogy we use a lot in the coaching at Triad is you know you look at other business models and apply lessons from those to the world of Finance I&#39;ll tell you what McDonald&#39;s is a hell of a case study the most successful franchise in the history of franchises and if you compare a financial advisor if it was like a McDonald&#39;s well back in the day when there had to be a human there to take your order now you can just do it on the punch screen but back in the day the only way McDonald&#39;s made money is if there was a paying customer across the cash register from them that&#39;s similar to most financial advisors the only way you&#39;re driving Revenue in a financial services firm is if you&#39;ve got a Potential Prospect with money across the table from you or across the zoom from you depending on your model well essentially at the simplest form any activity that takes a financial advisor away from the cash register away from that meeting is decreasing the revenue to the firm at the base level at the beginner level um and so oftentimes advisors are are doing their own paperwork they&#39;re building their own plans they&#39;re the janitor they&#39;re they&#39;re making the coffee in the morning so any of those activities because we all have the finite resource of time that take you out of Revenue producing activities hurt your firm and many of the firms we coach it starts with the founding advisor the partners that found out the firm that&#39;s cash register one and then the next one is service appointments but so if you have any amount of success now you have to withhold promises to clients because now you have a growing book of business well if you look at your calendar and by the way I&#39;ve seen many advisors like I I can&#39;t do an appointment for two weeks I&#39;m like well let&#39;s look at your calendar and all it is is reviews so basically that would be like a McDonald&#39;s where the entire line behind the register is refills free refills on the cola right because these customers have already paid per se and now you just have a line of service work and obviously as a fiduciary as you know anybody that runs a great financial services practice you have to withhold promises or uphold promises I should say and so now the service advisor model can actually help you because you think about it Dave if you&#39;re sitting there doing appointments all day and you&#39;ve got an inbox that hasn&#39;t been answered if you&#39;ve got voicemail you know light blinking on your phone you&#39;re actually a horrible service advisor already so the fact that you hire a service advisor that can proactively communicate quicker the client experience elevates but back to the cash register analogy now you actually don&#39;t have to leave the cash register as a selling advisor you can continue to do transactions which drives Revenue which creates cash flow to hire a bigger team so now you can have a service advisor you can have a planning team the other thing you think about imagine if you went to a McDonald&#39;s you order a Big Mac and the guy behind the cash register says hey just a second I&#39;ll be right back back and walks off to make the Big Mac you&#39;d be like what kind of operation are they running here you know this isn&#39;t very efficient yeah do it all the time in finance because that&#39;s the advisor that goes and builds their own plans and nothing against that there&#39;s some world-class like very you know cfp CFA designations but I will say if your goal is to grow Revenue and help more people any activity that takes you away from cash register or meeting Hertz the productivity of a financial services firm so that&#39;s why many one of the things we coach on is there&#39;s actually three types of advisors there&#39;s a selling or relationship advisor that&#39;s the one meaning the cash register there&#39;s a service advisor the one loving on and carrying on the clients and upholding all the promises and monitoring the financial plan there&#39;s a planning advisor that might be a little more analytical kind of think CFA engineer mindset they&#39;re the one in the back by the way if they focus on that they&#39;re building much more world-class plans than you could ever build being a part-time planning advisor in a full-time selling advisor so that&#39;s just a couple I mean there you can continue to dissect that all throughout the financial services firm but that&#39;s the first thing that comes to mind Dave on like the timing of this stuff yeah so some of the the to sum it up a few of the what are they actually going to be doing calendar email were two big ones right someone who is replying on your behalf or as the assistant that seemed like two big things if that takes up a lot of time just that because I&#39;m thinking like for the person who did who was hesitant who is hesitant uh you don&#39;t have to hire a 40 hour per hour per week person right you could find the eava virtual assistant that has a few things right um but I I heard it put once Dave to look at the stuff you you absolutely dread actually Dan Sullivan uh we just talked about in the podcast interview we just did Dan Sullivan um I love this that I took from him he said what if procrastination was a form of wisdom and so think about your desk and like the pile of paperwork that always piles up on the advisor&#39;s desk why is that because you hate doing it it&#39;s like the I will do that when it&#39;s the last thing I have to do well if procrastination was a form of wisdom look at those things that you dread that are always the last thing you do if you could write a check and never do that again the rest of your life and actually just stop there you&#39;d be happier you&#39;d probably show up at home better you&#39;d have less on your mind but the truth is you write a check and never have to do that again now that actually frees up time back to the cash register analogy where I can actually see more people and so it not only do you get rid of the things you don&#39;t like doing but you free up time to do the things that you love doing and drive more revenue and on the EA front I heard it put one time as well email is someone else&#39;s to-do list so if you come in and all you do is bombarded by emails all day basically you&#39;ve dedicated your time each day to doing other people&#39;s to-do list versus your versus your own to-do list and so a great EA inbox management um it&#39;s Brook School who&#39;s my EA that I have five emails or less to answer per day so she will literally answer on my behalf she&#39;ll say hey Brad&#39;s in a meeting do you mind if I hop in and help you out in the meantime nine out of ten people like heck yeah I&#39;m getting faster help here one out of ten like hey yeah just get this to Brad when he has a moment so now that&#39;s the one you need to personally answer so inbox management calendaring um do business do life you know the podcast that we do here that&#39;s our mission at Triad we want to do business and do life that&#39;s integration not balance is the way we view it she coordinates with my wife Sarah so before I commit to you know say we have a a client dinner flying in she is going to check with the home front hey are there any ball games that night I got myself in trouble so many times Dave where I just over commit we&#39;re Enneagram sevens we we&#39;ve got fear missing out we want to be at every party and so I would over commit and then I would just feel so guilty because I&#39;m like oh now I&#39;m gonna either disappoint the person that I already committed to or I&#39;m going to miss a ball game and I just was constantly torn think of a great EA as air traffic control for business and life and coordinating that making sure you&#39;re showing up at the right place at the right time so inbox management uh calendar management which I mean those two things right there by themselves could be a full-time job um also bookkeeping so you think about um hey I went out I needed to submit this receipt list lunch receipt as a business expense Brooke handles all of that where she&#39;s going to monitor those and get those to the accounting team so those are the the three real big ones and by the way I learned all of that from the guy that wrote the book on it Michael Hyatt I&#39;ve borrowed many of his uh Frameworks for that what is that book uh it actually he wrote a book I think it&#39;s called like be a world-class assistant um he wrote that and then his I&#39;m trying to I think they&#39;re actually work him and Jim Jim says he a they&#39;re they&#39;re working on a course I don&#39;t know if it&#39;ll be live by the time this hits the internet but I think he&#39;s doing a course on it too but yeah he wrote a book be a world-class assistant or something like that okay awesome um so uh one other one other tip uh belay b-e-l-a-y um great company uh that was how I found Brooke so she started out as 20 hours a week the cool thing is you can grow into this if this is new to you as an advisor so Brooke started out at 20 and then eventually it&#39;s like I need to be at 40 and then the way belay works it&#39;s almost like a head hunting firm I actually bought her out of her contract so it&#39;s a great way to test the concept get used to the concept and then if you find the right person where you&#39;ve got that chemistry um can actually hire them on full time and Brooke I&#39;m here in Lawrence Kansas she&#39;s in Atlanta she&#39;ll she&#39;ll see like if I&#39;ve got meetings running through lunch Chipotle will just show up at the door and she&#39;s like hey so you had meetings running through lunch and uh so I went ahead and got you Chipotle and oh that&#39;s one other that&#39;s one other tool um so there&#39;s a worksheet I got from Michael Heidi calls it an executive summary all it is is an Excel dock it&#39;s basically your life on a spreadsheet so it&#39;s frequent flyer number numbers Hotel Marriott numbers like if I&#39;m traveling where do I want to stay how do I want to get there how do I take my coffee you know what are the local places that I would order lunch from and exactly how my order would be my wife&#39;s name my wife&#39;s birthday my kids names my my kids birthdays anniversaries um one of his sayings is it&#39;s not lack of intention it&#39;s lack of execution that gets you in trouble and so Jim and Brooke on my behalf like my wife&#39;s 40th birthday is coming up big birthday I literally have been that guy it&#39;s like oh shoot my wife&#39;s birthday is tomorrow because I&#39;ve been so busy now I have somebody proactively looking out on the family calendar hey don&#39;t forget your wife&#39;s birthday is coming up in a month have you thought about a birthday present where&#39;s your birthday party going to be at what do you want to do where do you want to have it at date night what restaurant do you want to try so it&#39;s just like the work life integration really being proactive and looking out in advance in the future and just making sure you prioritize what you want to prioritize in life yeah I think that&#39;s awesome I I think Dave the EA role is the number one missing role in all of Finance you look at any Fortune 500 CEO they all have an executive assistant you look at any top performing financial advisor in our space almost none of them have an executive assistant I think it&#39;s the number one Gap in most Financial Services firms wow I love the what you said belay you recommended them to me I&#39;m using them as well um so and it&#39;s been it&#39;s been excellent so now were you able to on the on the first was the first hire the one or did you go through a couple before you found the right one currently is the one right now awesome it&#39;s only been a few months but it&#39;s already and then you you figure out stuff that you wouldn&#39;t have thought about unless you actually had someone who was there to support you and to take some of these things off your plate so if you can&#39;t think of things that they would do now which I&#39;m sure you can you know if you&#39;re listening to this uh there&#39;s even more that comes up when you hire somebody um so now let&#39;s go back okay solo person here&#39;s this hires the EA or the VA and they&#39;re doing 20 10 hours a week and they&#39;re they&#39;re taking some of these big things on a do not do list taken over freeing up time but then there&#39;s this this thing that you got to do which is people management most advisors you don&#39;t get into the business to do people management some are good at it I&#39;m horrible at it um and then as you continue if you continue to grow then you&#39;ve got this group of people and you want to make sure everyone&#39;s doing the right thing and things are moving forward and you become almost like a project manager if you&#39;re the if you work solo and now you&#39;ve got a group and then this idea of culture comes into play and all these new things which for a lot of people it&#39;s like well I didn&#39;t really sign up for that I want to talk to people and help them with their their finances and help them make good financial decisions how that&#39;s to me it seems like a hard transition do you have any advice when it comes to this idea of maybe it&#39;s leadership leadership and management two different things maybe it&#39;s making sure everyone&#39;s on the same you know rowing in the same direction vision what&#39;s your advice to someone who is now they&#39;ve crossed that first barrier and they&#39;re almost still going down because now they&#39;re training people uh they&#39;re they&#39;re writing processes and systems what&#39;s your advice for that person to get to the next level of working with a team oh there&#39;s just so many places to go with that um it is it is a common struggle um it&#39;s actually it&#39;s you know the book what got you here won&#39;t get you there it&#39;s that that that that is it&#39;s so I see it over and over and it&#39;s super frustrating to a lot of advisors because it&#39;s almost you hit this ceiling of complexity and you&#39;re not sure how to break through to the next level so um in simplest form if you want to scale any business of substance it as a successful financial advisor it flips from a slow player game to a multiplayer game and the tough part about being a great financial advisor is almost every single advisor I&#39;ve ever met in life started out as a solo game in fact most of them got horrible training um kind of thrown in the deep end and they were the one that didn&#39;t drown everybody else in their class 20 50 100 everybody else is like out they&#39;re washed out of the business they were the one that figured it out they grinded their way through it they problem solved their way through it they were a survivor and what&#39;s so tough is the moment you flip over and you have to start empowering a team it&#39;s so frustrating when the advisor that&#39;s been doing this 10 15 20 years has all this knowledge in their brain by the School of Hard Knocks and they have to slow down they have to watch somebody blow a couple sales fall on their face skin their knees and not lose their mind and have a calm demeanor about it it&#39;s like parenting Dave right and if you want your kids to be anything in life they&#39;re gonna have to stumble a few times along the way they&#39;re gonna have to build the character and you have to be patient and you&#39;re gonna have to allow that to happen and so that&#39;s kind of the first mindset you have to you have to start with patience and empathy and go back to that time when you were the 20-something-year-old advisor just getting into it and realize like they&#39;re not going to come into it with the same skill set that you did 20 years later the second thing that comes to mind you mentioned it vision no one can follow anyone that doesn&#39;t know where they&#39;re going or if they do you&#39;re all going to be scattered running all over the place and it&#39;s going to be Whirlwind of chaos every day and so taking a second um we typically coach on three years it&#39;s long enough out there that you can make dramatic changes but it&#39;s not so far out it&#39;s unattainable and so we work and we coach on a three-year vision and really clarifying what that looks like and if you think about it like we were just out in Vegas together think about like the Vegas Strip for those that have been there you can look out you can see you know the Caesars or or you know the kind of notable uh casinos and you&#39;re not exactly sure how far down it is but you know hey if I just keep walking in that direction I&#39;ll get there eventually that&#39;s a great vision you don&#39;t have to have the how you&#39;re going to get there in fact a great vision you shouldn&#39;t have the house it should be aspirational it should be we&#39;re not exactly sure how we&#39;re going to get there but we&#39;re going to find a way we&#39;re going to empower a team we&#39;re going to all work together for the collective goal of the vision so Vision alignment then how do you align the team to execute on that then execution most Financial Services firms it&#39;s execute execute execute Whirlwind Whirlwind Whirlwind appointments appointments chaos oh shoot we didn&#39;t hit our goal for this year oh we uh had five people quit on this and then they wonder why well nobody knew where they were going it wasn&#39;t a compelling vision look Elon Musk the one thing that guy knows how to do I&#39;m not saying I agree with all of his work practices and his hiring and firing and all that but I will tell you what the guy knows how to do he knows how to create a compelling Vision we&#39;re going to Mars we&#39;re we&#39;re building a rocket that&#39;s reusable we&#39;re building sustainable uh Transportation with Tesla he knows how to create a compelling vision and the right people join that the people that aren&#39;t scared of working 100 hours work but they are going to get a person to Mars that&#39;s who&#39;s at SpaceX right now and so it starts there and then the culture side of it there&#39;s one other thing our industry tends to look at the team as an expense versus an investment and if you look at building a team like Dave if I&#39;m like man this guy&#39;s pretty good at what he does he crushes it on YouTube he&#39;s a pretty intelligent guy I think he builds great financial plans for for his client man I&#39;d love to have Dave on the team the only way I&#39;m going to get a Dave solar is if I have a compelling vision and then I have a culture that attracts great talent and great humans and I pay them incredibly well I have great benefits you look at most Financial Services firms when they&#39;re small they have no 401K they have no match they have no health care it&#39;s literally like look at any Baseline business out there benefits you need to be that should be the minimum is Healthcare some sort of retirement plan some sort of match some sort of you know vacation package and then if you want to hire great talent they&#39;re already working somewhere they already have a great job they&#39;re probably getting loved on by their current company because they don&#39;t want to lose them and so you have to look at acquiring great talent this is one of the things I&#39;ve learned at Triad we&#39;ve gone from 0 to 60 team members in about two and a half years screwed a lot up along the way but one thing we&#39;ve learned no different than you need to if you&#39;re going to acquire clients to your firm go from Prospect to client you need to have great marketing and then you need to have a great process that attracts them that your firm is better than the one they&#39;re at or the one down the street I see so many advisors that are incredibly gifted at that with their own clients and then they suck at that with their own team what&#39;s really interesting is many of the same Dynamics there actually apply to a team you need to sell a great team member on here&#39;s why our place is better than where you&#39;re at here&#39;s the competitive package we&#39;re going to invest into you um great talent you should be 10 20 above Market you know if this role is a 50k roll industry-wide in your Marketplace you&#39;re going to need by the way that person that&#39;s already at a firm and already happy they&#39;re not making a lateral move human psychology does not like change so if you&#39;re offering 50k which is exactly what they&#39;re making with a similar benefits package you are never going to get that individual if you are now at 60k with a compelling vision and here&#39;s where we&#39;re going and we want to invest in you and we want to Career track not a job where you can grow once you&#39;re inside of this firm okay now that person perks up their head I&#39;m like huh 10K pay raise oh I have a career you know maybe it&#39;s marketing so if you look at your business sorry I&#39;m just fire hosing here but I&#39;m just giving you my stream of Consciousness so the biggest sleep is from financial advisor to business owner you now have to look at it as a business so now I have divisions I have a marketing division that&#39;s the before that manufactures the appointments I have sales which is the during the conversion process I have Ops which is the after which is following through on the Promises we make the plans we build um so now I need who&#39;s I go from tasks like hey Dave will you do this oh what should I do that&#39;s the constraint if Dave is the advisor in charge every task has to run through Dave if I move into phase two which is business owner Now Dave invests in great talent talent and marketing sales Ops typically the last Division and advisor leaves is sales because they&#39;re they&#39;re the one making mistakes but you might have a director of marketing now I&#39;m going to go from task delegation to I&#39;ve got a person that I&#39;ve empowered to have a responsibility over the marketing we use a framework called 1080 10. the front 10 is the ideation which would be Dave the founder meeting with person responsible for marketing hey I&#39;m thinking we might want to do some dinner seminars why don&#39;t you look at some local venues that are within 30 minutes of our office and let&#39;s you know they need to be kind of upper level risk risk level let&#39;s see what they are and bring those back now you&#39;ve delegated responsibility they&#39;re doing the middle 80 which is the work so front 10 ideation middle 80 percent them empowering them here&#39;s the missing piece for most advisors last 10 quality control this is why people get scared to delegate because they&#39;re like I get I gave them the task and then they were hosting the next seminar you know that I don&#39;t know the the buffet like what are the Golden Canyon or whatever they&#39;re called Coyote Canyon so because there was no quality control on the back yet where you basically check their work and so that last 10 is like okay I like these two let&#39;s get dates set okay cool and then after a few iterations of that now it&#39;s just a system and a business and so that&#39;s kind of that second phase is move into business owner which is empowering and investing in great team and talent and then getting the hell out of their way honestly that&#39;s what Ron Carson told me said number one thing that&#39;s contributed to my success is I hire great people and I get the hell out of their way I love that that 1080 10. that&#39;s super helpful you said an advisor and then kind of graduating to business owner I want to ask about the do you know any advisors do you have any stories of advisors who know that the the kind of paths two paths they can take but they don&#39;t want to be the business owner do they end up hiring the CEO or do they is that an option for people or do you just stay the solo and you have a small team and that&#39;s good you know what I mean like what if you don&#39;t want to be a business owner yeah so there&#39;s a few Frameworks out there so the short answer is yesterday um and that&#39;s what I love that&#39;s one of the things that just that&#39;s why I&#39;ve never gotten tired of this business there&#39;s so much freedom to build a business that suits you and serves you in this space like look at your store you&#39;re like I started creating YouTube videos you came up with a unique marketing funnel that served you and how you wanted to build a firm and guess what some people like I hate doing YouTube videos they&#39;re not going to do that um so here are the four phases of scale that we coach to there&#39;s the advisor in charge model which is typically where you start you&#39;re the solo practitioner surrounded by a bunch of assistants right like very generalized roles the second phase is business first or business owner we now divide the business into an actual business with a marketing division a sales Division and Ops division you can now start to hire leaders in each of those divisions typically like a director of marketing a director of Ops you mentioned like most advisors do not like Personnel great sales people tend to have not great follow-through not great like accountability and so you have to hire your compliments your differences are your strengths in business so so in Colby that would be a high follow through where most advisors are high quick starts if you&#39;re good sales people um so you might hire a high attention to detail that handles a lot of the Personnel to free you up for sales the third phase is CEO um and so phase one we delegate tasks phase two we delegate responsibility phase three we delegate the thinking to where now kind of a COO level they&#39;re thinking about the Ops they&#39;re coming and bringing ideas to you ideally they&#39;re a specialist in this with the track record of doing this before and so now as CEO and we&#39;ll get to like if you don&#39;t want to be CEO in a second CEOs are responsible for vision for the team where we&#39;re headed and inspiration like it&#39;s kind of the um the Mel Gibson Braveheart scene where he&#39;s got his face open and he&#39;s in front of the group riding a horse it&#39;s like that&#39;s a great CEO it&#39;s like an inspiring vision that people want to follow Doo is more the day-to-day execution and then phase four is board member where I have shares in the company but I do not have to show up on a daily basis and so where I&#39;ve seen to your question where founding advisors can kind of pick their own path I&#39;ve got an advisor we&#39;ve got an advisor in Chicago we work with he&#39;ll bring it their firm will bring in north of 200 million this year organically they&#39;re not buying firms and rolling them up and so back to Marketing sales Ops most advisors where they leave last is sales because they&#39;re responsible for the revenue right they&#39;re they&#39;re meeting with clients and you know some founding advisors will bump their minimums to a million two million three million they&#39;ve got an advisor team that maybe see the lower ones but if you want to remove yourself like Anthony did the advisor up in Chicago he actually wanted to rain make that was what he loved he loved the marketing similar to what you&#39;re doing right now Dave you&#39;re Rand making through YouTube you&#39;re you&#39;re generating appointments for a team that was his unique desire that was what kind of brought him Joy he&#39;s the TV guy he&#39;s the YouTube guy he&#39;s the seminar guy which by the way he&#39;s got a family his seminar speaking days he just retrofits his day he takes the whole morning off he does breakfast with his kids he drives them to school because a lot of seminars they&#39;ll be like I&#39;m not missing family dinners that&#39;s why I don&#39;t do seminars he&#39;s like the most valuable hour he makes about forty thousand dollars of Revenue every time he speaks every hour because of the ROI of talking with an audience full of qualified people so it&#39;s one of the most valuable things he can do on a daily basis so he just retrofit his day so we&#39;re on seminar nights he might hit the spa he takes he hangs with the kids in the morning drives them to school so he doesn&#39;t have this guilt of like I&#39;m sacrificing my family to build this business he just he just retrofits it and then he looks forward you know what could it make possible if you actually looked forward to seminar days and so he changed his seminar routine and day to where those are some of his favorite days he loves speaking in front of an audience he goes and crushes it and it&#39;s one of the most valuable things he could do to drive Revenue to the firm and then he&#39;s got a guy named Brian on his team all he does he owns the sales division so Anthony is making it rain appointments onto the calendar Brian all he does is he&#39;s their head sales guy he did north of 100 million I think it was like 108 Million last year of new assets gathered by one individual on the team because back to the cash register analogy all Brian did was set up the cash register all day he has no service work he has no planning no follow through he just sits and connects all day long every day and so when you start to so you go from generalist in the advisor in charge model to specialist and what Anthony&#39;s developed is a specialist in that role and in many other roles in his firm which by the way if you&#39;re going to build and attract a great team and a great culture and great talent great talent wants a career not a job so hey inside of our firm you start here and then here&#39;s the next step and the next step and you could if you do really well get up to here and by running this like a business not like a financial advisor you actually start to build these career tracks inside of your firm where people like oh cool there&#39;s opportunity there that sounds like a good opportunity that I&#39;m willing to to jump from where I&#39;m at wow this is exciting this is great great stuff at least for me super valuable well hey Fred hey back to your YouTube like if it&#39;s only you cool mission accomplished so yes no there&#39;s going to be a lot there&#39;s a lot of advisors um on streamline my practice that are gonna they&#39;re gonna love this um we&#39;ve got two minutes can you summarize in two minutes you you&#39;ve got do business do life family is is above work right a lot of it&#39;s easy to get burnt out especially if you love what you do it&#39;s easy to work and and work and always be thinking about work how do you focus on your family how do you be that Dad and also be a successful entrepreneur and advisor what&#39;s it just a framework or idea or tip well first off I&#39;ve screwed all this up along the way Dave so um nobody&#39;s perfect at this and anybody that says they are is lying to you um there is no manual for being the world&#39;s best husband or the world&#39;s best dad um but I think it starts with intention and almost I think universally every advisor that I&#39;ve ever talked with that is married that has kids or someday hopes to to you know have kids they all have the intent but the intent the way I try to live life is by Design not by default and back to I don&#39;t know how you&#39;ll slice and dice this video but somewhere along the way we just talked about an EA um what gets calendar gets done and so one of the things we do in my family um there&#39;s there&#39;s actually I think I&#39;ve heard this story the first time in Sunday school growing up um it was maybe you heard it Dave it was the parable of where there&#39;s this this empty picture and you know this guy puts these rocks in it and he says it&#39;s the picture full and the kid says yes it&#39;s like oh okay and then he takes some sand and he pours it in the picture he says how about now and the kid like kind of double takes and he&#39;s like well yeah now it&#39;s full then he takes some water and he pours it in the picture and the truth is a lot of advisors that I&#39;ve seen that get to kind of red line burn out just lack of balance the way their calendar works is all of that stuff that&#39;s poured into the calendar is business first and so what we do at the Johnson house once a year my wife and I it&#39;s around September November we sit down with Brooke my EA we look out over the coming year and we say we put the big rocks in first and the big rocks are family the big rocks are birthdays scripts the stuff that matters that is way more important than anything business related and now we pour the sand in the sand could represent the business calendar and that works around the big rocks it doesn&#39;t we don&#39;t do the sand first and then try to jam big rocks in them that&#39;s one of the things I&#39;ve seen a lot of advisors they try to cram the big rocks in after the business is on the calendar it just doesn&#39;t work and so I think it just starts with intention it starts with screwing a few things up and you create systems I&#39;ve tried to just surround myself with just people that are further down the path than me guys like Michael Hyatt that are super intentional and what I love is like he&#39;s he&#39;s told me the like Michael when I sat down with me it&#39;s like there&#39;s a point he has five daughters he was the CEO of Thomas Nelson he said I was literally on the verge of divorce because my wife sat me down and said I feel like I&#39;m a single mom and this is a guy that&#39;s like such a great human and so intentional and so I just know like if he&#39;s gone down past of messing this up everyone has and so you just try to get people in your life that you can learn from that are great mentors that are people that you aspire to be like and you just ask them and I found that most of them are really generous humans that just share everything and uh so that&#39;s that&#39;s a few thoughts that could be that could be a full day conversation Dave but that&#39;s a few thoughts from my side oh it&#39;s so helpful Brad thank you thanks for sharing that wisdom super helpful I&#39;m glad you&#39;re in my life you&#39;re one of those guys that you just mentioned um yeah advisors are going to love this thanks for being on the show hey likewise Dave uh I&#39;ve learned a lot from you as well so great to be connected with you thanks for all you&#39;re doing out there for advisors to help them level up in business and life and uh yeah hope this helps a few advisors out there and uh always down for another conversation so just let me know awesome awesome thanks Brad

Transcript for:Principles of Successful Financial Advisors

Transcript for:
Principles of Successful Financial Advisors