Articles About Financial Advisor Personal/Career Development

It’s an inevitable reality in the job of being a financial planner that there will be a lot of sitting. It may be at a desk doing financial plans on a computer, writing emails to or having phone calls with clients, or just outright sitting across from clients meeting with them. The problem: research finds that sitting for 8+ hours/day can increase the risk for everything from cardiovascular disease to type 2 diabetes (and an overall 24% increase in mortality rate!).

Of course, a financial planner can’t exactly avoid this by shirking their job duties. But it is possible to be productive in different ways, that don’t involve extensive sitting.

For instance, over the past year I’ve been ‘experimenting’ with everything from a standing desk (which I now use for all of my writing and office work) to doing conference calls with a headset while walking outside. You may find that meetings with colleagues or even some clients can be done while taking a walk together as well (at least if there isn’t any paperwork to go over!).

The end result, at least for me – the change in habits have helped me to lose over 40 pounds this year, accompanied by a material decrease of what was previously borderline high blood pressure, and my cardiovascular health has improved enough to drop my resting heart rate by nearly 10%! Of course, not everyone’s body may react quite the same way, but the fundamental point: it really is possible to get healthier, and remain productive, too!

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The existence of social media and search engines like Google have made it possible for niche advisors to succeed like never before, obtaining clients simply by creating content that demonstrates their expertise to their prospective clientele, and allowing those prospects to find their way to the advisor.

Yet the caveat of engaging in such inbound marketing strategies as a financial advisor is that they only work by actually creating the content, which for many advisors is a challenge unto itself in trying to think up topics to write about! As it turns out, though, there’s a remarkably easy way to come up with appropriate topics: simply create content to answer the questions your clients are already asking you!

And if writing still seems overwhelming, consider crafting an outline to help figure out what to write about. By breaking your article into 3 key points, then identifying 3 key concepts associated with each point, all that remains to create an article is just to create one paragraph (3 sentences!) to summarize each concept! (I call this writing approach the 3x3x3 strategy!)

Or alternatively, if writing is still a blocking point, consider just not writing at all! If you’re better at speaking, try recording yourself on video instead! If you just prefer to talk about the topics, try a podcast! Or hire writer who can work with you to take an initial topic idea and expand it into an article!

Ultimately, though, the biggest key to overcoming any writer’s block and producing content regularly is simply to commit to a regular schedule of content in the first place. Whether it’s just planning to do one article per month, or a rotating series of articles every week, by crafting your own “Editorial Content Calendar” you can create a form of accountability for yourself, to help ensure that your content creation efforts get the priority they deserve!

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Building a business as a financial advisor (or really, almost any business) is a constant effort of getting “more” – more clients, more revenue, more staff to serve them… in a process that can often leave the advisor feeling less and less in control as the demands of the business become overwhelming.

In the new book “Essentialism”, Greg McKeown makes the case that this “Paradox of Success” – the focus that makes entrepreneurs succeed becomes their undoing as the demands on their time increase due to the very success they created – can only be resolved by taking a systematic approach to creating focus on what is truly essential for the advisor to be doing. The classic approach of doing more and more – of multitasking and multifocusing – just leads to less and less productivity. Which means it’s actually the disciplined pursuit of less – what McKeown calls living the life of an “Essentialist” – that leads to more in the long run.

And ultimately, the lessons of Essentialism translate not only into personal success, but the entire design and focus of a business, where in a similar manner a strategic “focus” that goes in too many directions at once leads to little progress at all. By contrast, it’s the focused “Essentialist” business that puts all of its energy towards a single niche or specialization that can make the most progress and gain the momentum that sets the stage for future success as well.

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The first generation of financial planners rarely started out as financial planners; most were initially insurance agents or stockbrokers in the business of selling a product, who later evolved their business to get paid for advice instead (after they already learned how to sell). By contrast, financial planners entering the profession today often come to the table to be paid for their advice from the start, and subsequently struggle due to their lack of business development experience and sales skills.

After all, the reality is that even if someone comes into financial services to be paid for their advice – not the products they sell – it is still necessary to learn how to sell in order to convince potential clients to pay for that advice. Yet unfortunately, relatively little exists in the way of sales training for financial advisors who actually want to be paid for their advice – historically (and still), most “sales training” was/is available from the product firms who train their “advisors” how to sell their products.

Nonetheless, even if they must pursue it on their own, whether by reading, hiring a sales coach, or experience from the "school of hard knocks", it’s crucial for today’s new advisors to recognize that selling - and developing their sales technique - is an essential skill for success. From being ready to “ask for the business” and “go for the close”, to crafting a sales process, managing a sales pipeline, and monitoring business development metrics – in the end, it doesn’t matter how great your advice actually is if you can’t convince anyone to pay you for that advice in the first place!

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As June begins and the busy spring conference season comes to an end, it's time for the annual summer slowdown in the advisory business - when clients begin to travel and are harder to schedule for meetings, advisors themselves go on summer vacation with family, and there's a lot (or at least a little!) more time for relaxing and reading books.

As an avid reader myself, I know I'm always eager to hear suggestions of good books to read, and so in the spirit of sharing, I maintain a list of my top recommended books for financial advisors, and I launched my first "Summer Reading List" of recommendations back in 2013. It was so popular, I created a new Summer Reading list in 2014. And continuing the trend, I'm now excited to share my latest 2015 Summer Reading list, with suggestions on everything from practice management and "sales" skills to advisors, to the latest in Social Security, and for those who prefer a somewhat "lighter" fare, two recent books on how to teach children to be responsible with money and the science of how spending money really can make us happier.

So as we head into the summer season, I hope that you find this suggested reading list to be helpful... and please do share your own suggestions of what you're reading in the comments at the end of the article as well!

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For most, the idea of a “study group” conjures up high school or college students sitting around a table, preparing for an upcoming exam or perhaps working through a difficult assignment together. Yet the reality is that study groups are not necessarily unique or specific to students in school, and in fact are relevant in many professional services industries.

In the world of financial advisors, the purpose of study groups is not necessarily about “academic” study, but more commonly focuses on practice management and career development issues. And as advisory firms grow and business issues arise, advisor study groups are becoming more and more popular, although with their bent towards advanced concepts and topics they are perhaps better dubbed "Mastermind" groups instead!

In today’s post, we look at the phenomenon of advisor study/mastermind groups, how they form, what they actually do, the requirements that are usually involved, and the benefits of participating. If you’re already in a study group, this will hopefully provide some ideas about best practices, and if you’ve been looking to create a mastermind group, feel free to share in the comments to find some like-minded peers to form one!

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