The guru buzz is ‘to work smarter not harder’. Yet even armed with this wise advice, many people have hit an income plateau despite having tons of new technology and business books readily available. Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered why your business is stuck? Does everything seems to be stuck in your world at times? What is it that creates “stuckness” in a financial advisor’s practice?
I submit that the very thing that built your business is what has also attributed to it’s plateau. There is a wonderful Yiddish term which currently evades me, that roughly translates to ‘your greatest strength is your greatest weakness’. The way most of us built our business was through hard work! Dialing, smiling and going on appointments with anyone and everyone. It was hard, it was tiring and yet we managed to make a good amount of money but now something has left us frustrated! We seem not able to make any more. Our income has flat-lined. We make roughly the same amount every year, maybe even a little less then we once did. Our income is no longer making leaps of 40%, 75% or even 200% but we seem to be working just as hard, if not harder! The business does not seem to be fun anymore. It’s a job. Get up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat. It kinda reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day. Some of you may have been repeating the cycle now for 20 or even 30 years and you know in your heart of heart that you still have not reached your potential. For not hitting your potential, you receive a wonderful gift: GUILT! It is the gift that keeps on giving!
One of the reasons you have plateaued is that you are working “dumb” by expecting what worked for you 10 years ago should still work for you. Why aren’t you achieving high growth rates? It’s quite simple: your current business model does not support high rates of growth. To achieve high rates of growth you need to tweak if not totally reinvent you and or your business model.
I bet you are thinking that I’m going to say, you need GETTING RESULTS COACHING to help unstick you. Nope. I’m not going for the shameless plug. Instead, I’m going to give you an idea of how to begin to poke your head out of the ceiling you seemed to have hit.
How many hours a week do you have scheduled for yourself for focused THINK TIME about you, your business model and your future? If you are like most people your answer is ZERO time because you are too busy working dumb! Ouch! Structured THINK TIME will help loosen the glue of stuckness. Structured means putting it on the calendar and eliminating distractions so that you are completely focused on thinking, creating and playing with new ideas with no interruptions! The absolute most profitable asset you have is that space between your ears. You will be amazed at what you will produce if you use it consistently. So what do you think about during THINK TIME?
Here is a quick guide:
What are my targets?
How can I achieve my targets?
If I don’t know how to achieve my targets ask yourself if I did know what would be the answer. Or ask yourself what would Tom Hamlin, Shane Tavaar or SuperCoach do?
What is my business model? How can it be improved?
What are my opportunities?
Another tip: Think on paper or computer and bring that paper each time to your THINK TIME session. As sensei always said to me, “Ken, it takes time for rice to cook as long as you keep the flame burning it will get done.”
Too work smarter instead of harder you need THINK TIME.
Okay, time for the shameless plug: if at this time you cannot seem to break free on your own, you should consider hiring a financial advisor coach (think Getting Results Coaching.com). Most of the time an outside party can see your hurdles easier then you can.
