/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
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:
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Embracing Adaptability: A Key to Staying Relevant in the Financial Advisory Industry
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
“If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse,” is a widely quoted saying in athletic and business circles. Translation: if you’re not proactively doing things to improve yourself, your competitors are, which means you’re getting worse. Paraphrased for this article, it says, “If you’re not adapting, you’re falling behind.”
The financial advisory industry is evolving at a blurring pace, with rapid technological advancements, changing regulatory frameworks, and rising client expectations. From the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) to the proliferation of digital tools, these changes are reshaping how financial advisors interact with clients and manage their businesses. Simultaneously, clients are demanding more personalized, efficient, and transparent services, leaving no room for complacency.
Financial advisors who resist adapting face significant consequences. Stagnation or losing relevance in an increasingly competitive market can spell doom for a once-thriving practice. In this environment, the ability to adapt is not just a competitive advantage but a necessity for survival and success.
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To Ensure Success, Financial Advisors Must Fight Through Mental Roadblocks and Self-Doubt
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
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:
Read more
Four Imperatives You Must Embrace to Achieve Sustainable Growth in Your Practice
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
As you might already know, the key to achieving sustainable growth in a financial advisory practice is to focus on your core business of business development and client management. From a practice management standpoint, that requires developing business processes that enable you and your team to gain greater efficiencies while increasing productivity by doing more with less. In other words, turning your practice into a well-oiled machine.
But what about you? As the guiding force of your practice, what are you doing individually to ensure its sustainable growth? Business processes are essential for scaling your business and expanding its capacity for growth. But there are certain things only you can do to drive its growth.
Here are four imperatives financial advisors must embrace to achieve sustainable growth for themselves and their businesses.
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You Can’t Be Afraid to Fail. It’s How You Succeed.
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
Who doesn’t want to be a success? It’s what people, particularly financial advisors, strive for every day. No one wants to be a failure. But did it ever occur to you that it’s virtually impossible to be a success without failing? Successful people must be very comfortable with failure because they probably fail more often than they succeed. They’re successful because they use their failures as learning experiences to propel them forward.
Yet, many people seem to have such a dysfunctional relationship with failure that they can’t see the value in it, choosing instead to avoid it by not taking the same risks that led to it. That’s not learning. That’s capitulation, which never leads to success.
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Want to Get Out of a Rut? Focus on Becoming Exceptional
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
We can all remember when we first became financial advisors, feeling like we could conquer the world. With our entire careers in front of us, we were excited, motivated, and ready to commit everything we had to become successful. The great thing about starting out as an advisor was that there was never a dull moment. Everything was new, and we thrived on the daily challenges of learning how to build a successful practice.
Flash forward a few years, and time seems to slow down. The hours don’t fly by as they once did, and the pace of change has slowed to a crawl. That’s when you know you’re in a rut, which can be agonizing for someone who once braved the many obstacles that lay in front of all new financial advisors. For financial advisors, being in a rut can seem like dying a slow death.
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Self-Discipline Is Key
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An Advisor once sent me this message:
“You mentioned in one of your webinars that talent by itself means nothing. The key is to develop that talent into a skill. In your opinion, what is the most underappreciated skill among great advisors?”
Listen to this audio episode or read the transcript below to learn what I think great Advisors’ most underrated asset or skill is.
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4 Reasons Financial Advisors Should Invest in Education and Self-Development Early On
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“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Warren Buffett is perhaps the most successful investor there ever was. Not from just one or two big hits, but from a long string of investment successes over more than six decades. But he didn’t get where he is now without studying very hard at Wharton, then at Columbia, where he studied with the legendary Benjamin Graham.
Further, like a Roth IRA, self-development pays off the most when you do it aggressively early in life. The benefits of learning and knowledge compound over time (as long as you keep learning).
Here are four reasons why you should start investing in education and self-development as early in your Financial Advisor career as you can.
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Develop Leadership Skills So Clients Will Follow You
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
There’s far more to being a good financial advisor than simply setting up a financial plan and then walking away. The best advisors not only identify which path clients should take – but accompany them for the entire journey. Your clients need to know that you’re committed to their long term success. They will look to you for reassurance along the way. So you need to step up to the mark and develop strong leadership skills.
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Elite Advisors Never Lose the Will to Learn
/ by Don Connelly / Best Practices / 0 comments
If you stop wanting to improve your skills you will cease to be good at your job. Don’t let short term success make you overly confident or complacent. While having a successful month, a good quarter or even a good year is great news it does not guarantee your success further down the line. All bets are on that a slump is out there waiting for you somewhere, and when it does, it can quickly turn things on their head. So you need to have a backup plan.
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