set goals Archives - Don Connelly & Associates

To Ensure Success, Financial Advisors Must Fight Through Mental Roadblocks and Self-Doubt

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Being a financial advisor can be an enriching career with both monetary and personal fulfillment. The price for such success is years of hard work, sacrifice, and overcoming extended bouts of mental roadblocks and self-doubt that can shatter one’s self-confidence and potentially derail a career.

These mental hurdles can manifest in various ways but are almost always a result of intentional or unintentional behavior that hinders your own success or well-being—in other words, self-sabotage. It’s like consciously or unconsciously throwing a wrench in your own engine by the actions you take, such as procrastination, negative self-talk, perfectionism, quitting tasks prematurely, and avoiding challenges.

It can also transpire through unhealthy mindsets such as fear of failure, fear of success, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, lack of confidence, and limiting beliefs.

Few careers are as demanding as being a financial advisor, which makes it imperative to avoid doing things that can make it more difficult. All these actions and mindsets are avoidable, but it takes a conscious effort to weed them out, using “emotional self-regulation” – a process of monitoring, evaluating, and modifying your behavior. Here’s how it works:

Financial Advisors Sabotage Their Success Through Getting Ready to Get Ready

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I’ve seen it dozens of times. Financial advisors sitting at their desks, looking busy, immersed in their work, shuffling papers, searching the internet, and reading reports. Sometimes it seems to go on for hours, even days, leaving me to wonder what they’re working towards. But one look at their production records tells the tale. There is a strong likelihood they’re working on getting ready to get ready to do what they know must be done but can’t seem to pull the trigger to get it done.

I’ve come across many advisors who consider themselves “perfectionists,” the type of people who feel the need to ensure everything is in order before attempting the task at hand, be it making calls to prospects, dealing with an irate client, or making a critical presentation to a wavering prospect. As we all know, “perfect is the enemy of the good,” which is good enough for most people.

If we wait until everything is ready before starting a task, we’ll probably never get started. Consider the analogy of a person starting their car and waiting in their driveway for all the lights on their route to turn green. They’ll probably never leave their driveway. Maybe that’s the point.

To Win More Prospects, Show Them You Are the Goals-centric Advisor Clients Want

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As a financial advisor, you have one job and one job only—to help your clients achieve their financial goals. At least, that’s how your clients see it. That’s according to a research study by Morningstar, which revealed what clients value most in an advisor. Advisors would be well-served to keep that in mind in their efforts to win over more prospects.

Next on the list of what clients value most from an advisor is “skills and knowledge,” followed by “maximizing returns.” Unquestionably those are essential attributes. However, the study indicates that prospects may put less weight on them if you fail to check off the one they deem most important—helping them to achieve their goals.

What Advisors Need to Do to Help Set Client Goals

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According to a Morningstar study, what clients want most from their financial advisors is to help them reach their financial goals. That should be good news for financial advisors because, generally, people with clearly defined goals and ambitions for the future have the conviction to adhere to a long-term plan to achieve them.

However, it could also spell disaster for advisors who fall short in helping their clients articulate their most important goals and fail to gain their commitment to achieving them. To inspire action, client goals must be well-defined and quantifiable with genuine intrinsic value. Anything less is a hopeful aspiration, and hope is not a strategy.

3 Steps to Build Your Self Confidence Regardless of Your Experience Level

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At some point in their careers, every financial advisor suffers from the affliction of self-doubt. For most of us, it overcomes us at the beginning of our careers. For some, it can linger on for several years. Heck, even experienced advisors have bouts of self-doubt, but they tend to be rare. Whatever the reason for it, self-doubt or lack of self-confidence can be a career killer or, at the very least, a painful way to go through life.

There probably isn’t an advisor among us who early on thought to themselves, “Why would anyone want to work with me?” “I work in a cubicle. I’m just a few years out of college. Many of the people I talk to are old enough to be my parents. The younger ones are successful in their careers. What business do I have telling them how to become financially successful?”

Sound familiar?

7 Qualities Financial Advisors Must Have to Achieve Their Goals

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What do successful financial advisors do that unsuccessful or even adequate advisors don’t, won’t, or can’t do? I could list several things here, but it all starts with setting clearly defined goals—and then achieving them. But, while the vast majority of advisors understand the importance of setting goals—actually writing them down—and having a plan to achieve them, fewer manage to achieve them. As a result, they never raise the bar for themselves, gradually slipping into mediocracy.

The failure to achieve goals can be attributed to a number of things—i.e., the goals are unrealistic or too vague; not having or strictly following a plan; not being accountable for your goals, to name just a few. While these are identifiable reasons for not achieving goals, they are more of an expected outcome for advisors who lack the vital qualities to carry them to success. You can have the most incredible work ethic, but if you’re not setting and achieving your goals, it’s like a rudderless motorboat spinning around in a lake.

11 Must-Have First-Year Financial Advisor Goals

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It’s tough making it through your first year in the financial advisor business. It’s going to be even tougher without some specific goals to give you focus. If you set goals though, you’ll have some framework for deciding how to manage your time and money.

Your first=year financial advisor goals should be as specific as possible – so you know when you’ve achieved them. And write them down: People who write down their goals are 33% more successful at attaining them than people who keep their goals in their heads.

Here are some of the most important objectives for your first year as a financial advisor.

Being Accountable May Be The Key to Your Success

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Being accountable will benefit not only your business, but every aspect of your life. Being accountable to yourself will help you focus your attention on your performance, encouraging you to set and achieve personal goals. Being accountable to your clients will help you keep them on track and invested.

Here’s how being accountable will help you succeed as a Financial Advisor.

5 Ways to Develop Accountability

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Accountability is a trait many advisors lack, but one that elite advisors always possess. No matter how great your talent you won’t get ahead unless you become accountable for your actions and the actions of your clients. Without accountability you won’t develop the self-discipline you need to take charge of your career and make changes for the better.

If you need help to develop accountability, here are five ways you can get started.

Procrastination Will Ruin Your Chances of Success

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Procrastination can take different forms. You may consciously procrastinate and avoid what you know you should be doing, or you may unconsciously put off your top priority tasks by attending to a series of ‘never ending fires’. Whatever type of procrastination you suffer from it can be ruinous to your business. Here’s what to do instead.

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