Episode Transcription 

INTRO  00:08

This is the ultimate advisor podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets, and to create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump in to another amazing episode of the ultimate advisor podcast.

Brittany Anderson  01:07

Welcome back to your ultimate advisor podcast Brittany Anderson here today with Draye, Redfern and Bryan sweet. And we are rounding out the mini series where we’ve been talking about habits of some of the most successful people out there, what we see the high achieving successful advisors doing and not doing. So we started out the series by talking about what it means to be a lifelong learner in absorbing information in encouraging that amongst your team, amongst your children, amongst your clients and other professionals in your life. Then we navigated into what it means to say no to the things that don’t really matter to the things that may be distractions, so you can focus on your top priorities. And then we spend a little bit of time talking about how you can not allow negativity into your life to throw you off course, about how you should not listen to the naysayers. And what this all really boils down to is that when you are somebody who again, you’re that high achiever personality, you’re pursuing success. What we want you to do is to believe that you can that you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to, and then actually take action around it. When you think about the most successful when you think about, again, people you might admire the Richard Branson’s of the world, the Oprah Winfrey’s of the world, people that have achieved things that many deems not possible. It’s because they took action. It’s because they didn’t just sit on their ideas, they weeded things out, and they pursued what mattered most. So again, what separates the best from the rest, they don’t just sit on an idea they pursue it. So I think this is so important, as we kind of round out this mini series, it’s making sure that you don’t fall into the trap of just absorbing information and not doing anything with it. So this is a prime example, this podcast actually, at the end of every single session, we go through the top three takeaways, I think there’s only been one or two where we’ve maybe snuck in a fourth because it tied or it was like 3.1. But it’s because it tied into one of the other three, the reason that we do that is number one, we want you to actually get true tangible takeaways from these episodes. And we also don’t want you to be distracted by feeling like you have 15 things you need to implement. So that when you think about it, there are a million great ideas out there. But if you don’t act on the most important ones, all you’re going to be doing is learning and just hoping that something comes out of it. So you know, one thing personally, that I’ve done to overcome fear is to just take action. So for me, from my perspective, I’ve gone through this exercise a handful of different times now. And I will tell you that it’s nothing that’s it’s not a brand new concept. But it has helped me personally in in so many different ways. So when you’re about to leap into something, let’s just say you know, you’re going to give a presentation in front of a big crowd or, you know, you are going to be in front of a prospect and you’re nervous about it. You’re going to be giving a presentation of sorts in front of a bunch of centers of influence, you know, whatever it may be for you sit down and write down what the absolute worst case scenario could be. In that situation. Like if you’re fearful to take action, write down the worst case scenario. If it doesn’t hurt your family, if it doesn’t hurt your future, if it doesn’t hurt your overall well being. It’s really not that big of a deal. So again, I think fear can be the one thing that tends to hold us back from taking action because of the uncertainty of what may come on the other side. But if you can sit down Put on a piece of paper, we’ll go old school here with a pen and a piece of paper and write down the things that you know absolute worst case scenarios that could come out. If you take action, you’re going to find that you’re willing to do a heck of a lot more than what you maybe thought originally. So I think that’s something that, you know, when we believe when we have true, I use the word conviction in the last episode, when we have true conviction behind what it is we’re trying to achieve, and the why behind it, it makes it a heck of a lot easier to actually spring into action. So Bryan, I would love for you to jump in at this point, and just talk a little bit about how doing has been a really big contributor to your success over the years and how, you know, it’s something that you really try to breed into the culture of the company.

Bryan Sweet  05:47

It’s, it’s a really interesting concept. But, you know, nothing really happens until you take action. And we all can very easily procrastinate and wait till things are perfect, or the timings better, or this thing or that thing. And one of the things that I have found is just the simple act of doing something. And it doesn’t necessarily even have to be 100%. Right? Matter of fact, most times, it won’t be. But that moves things forward and keeps progress happening. And it’s a big learning curve, because there’s a concept that I’m very thankful to Dan Sullivan, that he taught us that has been really helpful to not only me, but also the team called the 80% rule. And the 80% rule simply says, as soon as something is 80% along, just take action, and get it out to the public or do it. And this really applies to virtually anything that we do. And what I have found in just personally, implementing changes at the office. I remember one time we were years ago, when we were going to thinking about going to all fee based and I kept telling myself, well clients, you know, when go to fee based and Gee, we’re in a small town, and they won’t buy that. And I had 58 different excuses. And then we just simply said, well, let’s just try it once. And to my surprise, which normally every time I’ve delayed something, and then done it, it’s turned out much better than I had worried about. So that’s the other thing to keep in mind is look at your past successes, when you’ve actually done something, and good things have actually occurred. Because that’s normally the case when you do something typically good things happen. And so our role now is it gets 80%. And you know, we we bring it out to the public. And no one knows what perfect looks like except you. And you might not know what it looks like either. But if you get it out, then you can seek input and you can make improvements in it and continue to make it better. If you wait till it’s perfect, it’s never going to be perfect, and you’ll never get any results. And so I just think it’s a thing where it’s easy to let ourselves down. And that procrastination word to kick in and, and really have negative effects. It’s also maybe little steps, like putting things on your calendar to remind yourself to get things done, versus keeping it as a as a wish list. And maybe I’ll go back to Brittany here and, and see if she’s got any examples of things that I may have done over the years where I may have been guilty of this that she’d like me to share more on but anything that comes to mind, Brittany that you’d like me to maybe use as an example,

Brittany Anderson  09:07

hey, Brittany here, stopping and pausing for a moment to talk about something that we’ve had so many of you inquire about and that is our ultimate advisor, mastermind. Now I’m going to start by saying if you are not a growth minded individual, if you are not somebody who is focused on taking your business to the next level, if you’re not focused on engaging your team, and helping them to help you in turn, level up the business, the service model, how you provide that wow experience to clients. If those things are not your focus, just fast forward right now, because the ultimate advisor mastermind would not then be for you. However, if you are looking to take your business to the next level, if you want to experience exponential growth And feel supported along the way. If you want to start working smarter and not harder, if you want to help your team members to work within the God given talents that they were provided, and use those skill sets in a way they haven’t yet to help support you and your business to help them realize their biggest goals, their biggest dreams. If you want creative approaches to marketing, I know that can be an intimidating word. But we’re not talking here about the fancy Facebook stuff, or, you know, the latest and greatest, but rather looking at how you can market what you do, how you can express how you’re different, and how you can truly differentiate yourself in a crowded market space. If those are problems you’re looking to solve, then you absolutely want to go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth. You know, honestly, I guess we could maybe use Strategic Coach, this is a good one, I think that you know, when you joined, oh gosh, over 20 years ago. Now, we’ve talked about this quite a bit about how, you know, you’ve had all these great tools, and you think about implementing and taking action and, and maybe being uncertain of the outcome. And we’ll just use this as a basic one, you know, until you and I started going into that together, and really looking at how we can implement it, but implement it in an effective way where the team buys in, then you’re not frustrated, they’re not frustrated. I mean, that’s one very broad, general example that I can think of. Otherwise, you know, I think, Bryan, this is just something that, that, you know, you and I have, again, talked about quite a bit is that if you can sit down and again, do that whole exercise of what’s the worst that can happen? I think a lot of high achievers can be over thinkers too. And you know, Bryan, I know you kind of jokingly said, oh, maybe I’ve done this a time or two. But I think that’s part of it. And also if you if anybody here knows that the Colby index, okay, oh, l b e, Colby index assessment, Bryan is high on the Fact Finder and follow through, which often makes for a wonderful advisor. But it can also cause I would guess you could call it like inner conflict when it comes to pushing projects forward. Because you have to fact find every single detail. So when Bryan said that one of the best things that we’ve implemented in the office is this 80% rule. I mean, that’s been very freeing. And Bryan, I don’t want to speak for you. But I think freeing from Bryan’s perspective as well, because it allows him to fact find so far, and then essentially pass it off, or put it out into the world to see what else you know, needs to be done at that point. That way, you don’t get caught in that trap of perfectionism, or get caught in the trap of like Bryan said, procrastination, where you’re sitting on something, because you just have uncertainties around it. So I won’t pick on you too much, Bryan, but those are a couple things that I can think about. You know, and again, I think if anybody knows the Colby, or knows how you, you work yourself, you’re great. You’re a great advisor because of who you are. And a lot of times that comes with that deep fact finding. So that’s just something to be conscious of as you’re looking at how you work and how you operate.

Bryan Sweet  13:28

And I think that it’s well said, I think the 80% rule gives you permission to either release it to the public, or release it to another person and let them do their 80%. Because another 80% on the 20%. That’s not done is 96%. So well said I think sometimes we all need permission to move forward or beyond a project that isn’t 100% done. And so thank you for saying that, because that rule really does help you kind of stop at some point without totally overthinking it, which I tend to always do, and move forward and share with another team member and or get it out to your clients. So Draye I know you have lots of thoughts on taking action, because you do that all the time and lots of different projects and things that you’re affiliated with. So I’d love to hear any comments that you have.

Draye Redfern  14:26

Yeah, I think there’s there’s a couple things here that I’ll touch on briefly. I think the first one is when it comes to taking action. I was talking about this a little bit previously. But creating a forcing function is what psychologists call it, something that makes you actually take action. So the example that’s used often is if you have to get a three hours worth of work done and your laptop battery only lasts for three hours. Then go to a coffee shop or the library or somewhere else in which you’re not going to bring your charger so you can’t charge it. You get to sit down, you get to work, because you’ve only got three hours where the charge until that thing dies is a forcing function, you got to get straight to work, go serve on Facebook or checking the news or all of the ins and outs, you get straight to work as a forcing function. And I think for me, having had, you know, lots of ups and downs and craziness and, you know, in my life, action has always been something that I’ve, you know, not had an issue with. And I didn’t realize this until you know, the later years, but forcing functions have been involved in everything that I’ve ever done. So even going back, you know, five, six, whatever how many years ago, it’s been now with Bryan and Brittany and meeting them at Genius Network, that was a forcing function, you know, for me at the time, my wife and I are entrenched in a massive lawsuit that cost us a million dollars of which we didn’t have at the time. And you know, my philosophy is always sort of Ben, if you’re in the right room, it’s worth 100 times, whatever the investment cost is to be there. And so, you know, even back then joining genius was the catalyst for a lot of amazing things that have also happened in my life. But that was a forcing function where you know, what we are, we’re sinking deep, the Titanic is going down, let’s throw some, you know, some gasoline on that fire financially, to make this baby burn even faster. That’s how most people would probably look at it. But as a forcing function that created the precipice, I would say, to do significantly more things and make more connections and meet more people and do more things. And that really, is become what my life is today. And so you know, taking action is always important. But if you create the environment to make that action more successful, or increase the probability of it, you’re going to be much better off, you want to go to the gym in the morning, super good for you. Maybe you wear your gym clothes to sleep in the night beforehand. So it’s one less thing you got to do the next day to take action, you want to go run or walk after work at the park, bring your running shoes with you and stick them on the passenger seat of your car, or be that goober wearing a suit and tie and you know, your running shoes, you’ve got no excuse not to do it. I don’t recommend that stylistically, but whatever. You know, there’s ways that you can do these things in your life, whatever the scenario may be, to just make taking action easier, because we all tend to procrastinate, whether we don’t Eat That Frog, as Bryan or Tracy would say, whatever it is, but create the environment or make the decisions easier for you to do those things. I think everybody has their own methodology for doing that. But there’s a couple of tactical examples, I would say, to make that happen. So Brittany, handing it back to you now.

Brittany Anderson  17:54

You know, I think you use the term Eat That Frog. And I think that’s an important one to think about. You know, I think there’s a couple things that need to happen when you look at projects or tasks that are outstanding on your to do list. I personally just went through this exercise in the last month. And it was really helpful. So taking that bird’s eye view and saying, what is it that I am stalling on action? And where the heck does it need to go in order to get it done, and or get it started. So that’s something that personally I have put a ton of time and attention to. Because typically, if there’s something that is not in action, it’s because either you don’t know how to do it, or you don’t know who to bring into it, or you’re uncertain of the outcome. So if you can basically minimize those few things and navigate where it needs to go or what needs to happen to get it off the ground, or making the decision that maybe it’s not worth doing at all, and just completely scrapping it and throwing it away. So I think that whole concept of eating the frog is important because sometimes people think that you can be disciplined and just tackle all these tasks. And all it takes is more focus and discipline. And I tend to disagree with that. I don’t think for any high achiever, that they’re intentionally being lazy or wanting to procrastinate, because if you’re anything like me it like eats at your soul, when you’re procrastinating something, a lot of times it’s that maybe it shouldn’t be on your plate in the first place. Or maybe there’s some component of it that needs to be delegated off. And that’s what can actually spring you into action. Alright, so moving into our top takeaways, number one would be deciding what you can apply that 80% rule that Bryan brought up to, I think that’s really important is looking at, you know, what are the projects and our tasks and our priorities that are sitting on your plate right now that you have just been frozen from action frozen from launch, you know, if it’s something that it’s at least 80% of the way done, move forward. Right? The big The best piece of advice that we can give here too, is that a lot of times you’ve heard us talk about this in previous episodes if you’ve been with us for a while, but making sure that you’re not falling in love with your own message. So let’s just use like a marketing project, for example, the best way to see if it hits is to actually launch it, is to actually put it in front of potential check writers put it in front of people who are prospective clients, or who are existing clients who can give positive feedback, or I should say, constructive, I may not always be positive, but it’ll be constructive. So making sure that you’re measuring, what can you apply that 80% rule to number two is to define your forcing functions, I am so glad that Draye that you brought that up that you went down that path, because this is a huge one in my own life. And this is a big one in the lives of so many high achievers, that I know it’s basically putting something that’s gonna cause you to take action. And it can be as simple as you know, scheduling a meeting on the calendar, you know, I think about different material and things that we test through ultimate advisor coaching, one of the best ways to figure out if it hits or not, or to make you create that presentation is to book something, book, something where you have to be live in front of people, there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room there once that’s on the calendar. So making those choices to define your forcing functions. Number three, is to take measure of the who’s in your life, that can increase your likelihood of taking action. So again, you know, we use the example with Bryan how he had been a member or part of Strategic Coach for so so many years. And you know, kind of hit a wall a little bit with some of the tool implementation. Well, number one, you know, Bryan’s great at being that visionary and sitting down and, you know, brainstorming and utilizing the tools, but to decimate them to team members. That’s not his unique ability. And that’s fine, because he should be spending his time as the visionary. So I was able to come in and help close that gap and be a who, for Bryan, and who for the business overall. And I could name so many different scenarios now where our team members are the Who’s that are allowing us to focus on the bigger picture vision, the bigger picture projects for the office, and make sure that everything else is done well. So again, we’ve talked many, many times about how we believe in hiring before you actually desperately need it, because that often backs you into a corner. So just measuring and saying, you know, do I have the people in my life that are going to help me take action and now I have the people in my life who are going to hold me accountable to what I’m committed to. So that wraps up today’s episode of your ultimate advisor podcast. We’ll be right back with you in a couple weeks. Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don’t keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimateadvisormastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community and we look forward to a continued relationship