coaching Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

Why Financial Advisors Need a Coach

January 8, 2024 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

For challenging endeavors in which people seek to achieve a level of performance beyond their current capacity – such as sports, weight loss, or running a business – they have a better chance of getting over the top by working with a coach. Even successful business executives and sports figures recognize the significant gap that separates a plan from action, theory from practice, and activity from results.

For most people, it often takes an external force to push them beyond their comfort level. That’s what a coach does. The top athletes in the world hire a team of coaches because they know they can’t get to the next level without them. In complex and vital endeavors, we could all use a coach to keep us detached from our emotions and accountable to our goals when our discipline fails.

Ask any professional athlete, corporate executive, or entrepreneur why they hire a coach, and they’ll tell you they want to increase their earnings by improving their performance. It’s no different for financial advisors.

Finding the Right Mentor

September 20, 2021 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

Financial advisors must bring with them some essential traits. They need to be ambitious, courageous and thrive on hard work. That’s just the minimum required to survive the early years. From there, the learning curve is steep, with much to learn—technical and analytical skills, product knowledge, and critical soft skills—all while riding a wild rollercoaster of ups and downs. Those who choose to go it alone struggle mightily to get to the next level. But those who develop a successful relationship with the right mentor often flourish.

Mentors are vital to financial advisors’ growth and development, helping them achieve all their goals and prepare them to face even the harshest of markets with equanimity.

5 Steps to Create and Sustain a Winner’s Mindset

November 30, 2020 / by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments

I’ve already written about self-sabotaging behaviors, and how to avoid them. But today, I’d like to address the flip side of the coin: How you can actively develop and maintain a winner’s mindset.

I’ve known many hugely successful advisors in my time. And they all have certain traits in common:

– They take a proactive approach to time management;
– They don’t make excuses for themselves. Instead, they take on and eliminate or bypass obstacles;
– They surround themselves with positive influences and accountability partners;
– They constantly expose themselves to positive messages and ideas.
– They get help when they need it.

So here are five things you can do to help develop that winner’s mindset – and sustain it over time.

Get Comfortable with the Notion that You Need to Sell in order to Grow Your Business

January 15, 2015 / by Don Connelly / Don Guest Authoring at..., Marketing Yourself / 0 comments

Advisors approach me about coaching. Rarely are the requests about improving their selling skills. Being better organized, being more efficient and going to the next level are popular goals. But I cannot recall one instance where an Advisor said to me, “I want to be better at selling.”

I don’t think that the reason for not asking me is that every Advisor thinks he or she is a great salesperson. Rather, I think that ‘salesperson’ is an image to be avoided at all costs. To many Advisors, selling is a dirty word.