Episode Transcription 

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 and 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  01:01

Welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Brittany Anderson here again with a wonderful Mr. Bryan Sweet and the fabulous Mr. Draye Redfern. And we are continuing from last week’s conversation where we dove into the topic of fear. Now, if you did not listen, I highly recommend push pause right now and go back and listen to last week’s episode. You know, there’s so much to be unpacked around the idea of fear and how it can hold us back from really realizing our true potential. So I’m going to open with the statement today that there is truly and you can argue with me on this until the cows come home and I will stand firm and this belief that there’s no such thing as failure. Failure only happens when you quit. So embrace that idea as we go into the rest of the content for today. And the thing that I want to frame this with is that when you’re looking at and measuring success, and really understanding you know where you’re at in your business, you know, last week Draye talked a little bit about how, you know, it’s really easy to look at how far you still have to go, how you maybe haven’t realized your potential, how you know, there’s so much that you could be doing in addition to what you’re doing? Well, the thing that often happens when people fall into that mindset. And I’m not perfect, because I do the same thing. But a lot of times what happens there is you’re actually measuring against somebody else. So you have to remember that someone else’s success is not your failure. Alright, I’m going to say that again. Someone else’s success is not your failure. And it does not matter you as a financial advisor, what can happen is you’re like, Oh, well, you know, Bill down the street. He’s an advisor. And he’s actually a friend of mine. And oh, he you know, he’s killing it. He’s doing a great job. He’s really his brand and assets. He’s growing like crazy, and I’m not there yet, I must be doing something wrong. It’s like, Well, the only thing you’re doing wrong is you’re comparing against somebody else. So what you want to look at is defining what your opportunity looks like, define what your definition of success looks like. Because in turn, what will happen is any time you fall on your face, because it will happen. It happens to all of us, when you’re going in growth mode, you’re going to trip you’re going to fall, you just need to make sure that you get back up. I was reading a book recently, where this gal in her business, she actually throws failure parties. I’m not kidding you. She decorates the table, she brings in confetti and balloons, and they all go into their conference room. And I could totally see Redfern Media Mr. Draye. I could see you guys doing this. I don’t know why I thought of you immediately. But going into a conference room, and they’re like, you know what, I’m so excited that this happened, because of all that we are going to learn and improve. So then it turns into oh my gosh, I’m going to get in trouble. Rather than having that mentality amongst your team. They’re looking at it going, we are set to learn so much from this experience. And we’re going to come out even better on the other end. You know, we’ve referenced multiple times throughout the podcast journey. We talk about this in our trainings under Ultimate Advisor Coaching in our Mastermind, this is the hot topic, but Dan Sullivan’s concept on the experience transformer. So Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach has this whole tool that he works through that essentially makes you look at whatever happened that in that negative context and say, What actually went right in the process, what went wrong, and what steps can we put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and that this is even better next time around. So whether you are the person that is listening to this that wants to throw a big party with confetti, or you simply want to have the conversation around that Strategic Coach tool, it doesn’t matter what matters is that you use every failure as an opportunity to grow. A lot of times what happens is, you know, there’s a break in a process, there’s a break in a workflow. So it doesn’t mean that you have an incompetent team, it means that there’s some component in how you’ve been doing things that has a missing or a broken link. Now, it’s a very different conversation. And almost every single time we teach on this in our Mastermind, somebody chimes in and says, Well, how do you know how do you know if it’s really performance or behavioral versus a break in the process, I will tell you, if you use the methodology we’re talking about today, that becomes so crystal clear, it’s going to become very evident, if somebody is making the same mistake over and over and over, that becomes a performance issue, you have to correct. A lot of times, that’s not the case. But the problem is, is that if a business doesn’t have a framework for identifying that gap, or where are the issues coming from, you may make hasty decisions, when it comes to your team, you may make comments that can’t be taken back all of that negative stuff that can happen. So it’s really important to follow this framework. Now, before I bring Mr. Sweet into this, because I know he and I talk at length about how we cannot be afraid of failure and really measuring and having our fears work for us, as we talked about last week. But one point that I want to drive home, is that if you don’t overcome your fears, if you don’t figure out how to put them to work for you, it is going to be really, really hard to grow through any sort of failure, or to even allow failure to happen in the first place. So think about that. One, if you do not know how to put your fears to work for you, you may actually be holding yourself back because of that fear of failure, when in reality, that failure may be the next wide open door to the biggest opportunity of your life. So Bryan, I know that you have evolved over the years and your thoughts around this and how Strategic Coach has been a huge proponent in shifting your mindset to turning failure from something that’s negative into an actual positive experience, I’d love to hear your thoughts here.

Bryan Sweet  07:13

This has been so fun for me because I’ve come into the realization that this topic could actually be one of the things that hold people back the most, but could also be the most defining factor on why people succeed in the future, once you recognize what’s going on. So this is so mind altering, it’s fun to think about and chat about, but you’re 100% correct. When I started in business, I had all of the same fears and concerns and let them affect me negatively. And through the use of Strategic Coach and other coaching programs, you get exposed to the positive thinking, and that, you know, there is no such thing as failure, as you alluded to Brittany, and it’s, it’s either you have success, or you learn something, and either one of those is a really positive thing. But I think one of the things that made me realize is that it is so important, who you hang around with, and the people that you associate with, because if you spend time with the right people, they’re going to help you overcome those fears, because they’re going to call you on it, when they see you doing activities are not taking action, and they know you should be whereas people that are maybe by nature negative or, you know, they don’t think you can do anything and life is what you have, and you can’t ever improve on it. They’re never going to call you on it, they’re just going to think that’s normal, and you’re like the rest of us and you can’t accomplish anything and you can’t do anything. And that, you know, is so far from the truth. And so, you might want to just also create a list of who are you spending the most time with? And are you involved in any programs like the Ultimate Advisor Mastermind or coaching plan where we are very much positive oriented, and we’re going to help you overcome any fear that you have and even help you create a game plan on how to do that. But if you find yourself in a room or spending a lot of time with people that think failure is fatal and final, you might want to create a new list and start, you know, associating with others that don’t feel that way. The other thing that I have found is once you change that mindset, it applies to literally everything that you do in the future. And as we’ve talked about, one of the joys that I’ve gotten is in addition To have an amazing financial practice, I’ve been able to create lots of new business ventures together like this Ultimate Advisor Coaching with Draye and Brittany and lots of other things. And what I have found is, I don’t see failure is even an option. Now. It doesn’t even come up in the thought process. It’s just a matter of how am I going to get there? How quickly can I get there. And it just allowed me to venture into uncharted territories without having the stress and worries about what if it doesn’t succeed. And that’s an amazingly freeing thought process. And I will tell you, another thing that I’ve learned, and we have really taken to heart, especially in the last couple of years is another tool that Dan Sullivan was Strategic Coach has taught us, which is called the 80% rule. And so part of what people do is they, they tend to want to be perfectionists. And if this project isn’t perfect, I can’t deliver it to the marketplace, because it just won’t have good results. Well, I will tell you that is so far from the truth, I can’t even believe it. Because what you should think about is, whatever it is you want to deliver into the marketplace. First of all the people you’re delivering it to have no idea what it’s supposed to look like in the first place. So whatever you deliver is what they think it’s supposed to look like. But if you just get it to 80%, and you get it out into the marketplace, that means you’ve just taken some action, and no one knows what can happen. But I can guarantee you that if you don’t take action, nothing’s going to happen. And then once you have it out there, that doesn’t mean you can improve it, you could do another 80% improvement on the 80%. And now you’re at 96%. But if you don’t get it out there the first time, you may never get it out there. And by delivering it, the marketplace will tell you what needs to be fixed, what’s not perfect, what do I need to make improvements on? And so actually, it’s a positive thing to get it out there because they’re going to tell you what to fix, instead of you trying to guess what it is that I need to do better? Why don’t you let the people that are actually going to use your services tell you, and then you can design it exactly, well, how the marketplace will best accepted. So I just think those are a couple of quick points. And I know Draye you’ve got some amazing things that I’d love to hear on using failure as an opportunity for growth.

Brittany Anderson  12:54

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 ultimateadvisormastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth.

Draye Redfern  14:53

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff there that the you mentioned, Bryan that I’m wholeheartedly in agreement with. I think that from my died, regret is worse than failure. I’d rather have failed and learn something from it then regret later on Oh, I would have I could have I should have on like my deathbed or later on in life or any of those things, regret is worse than failure to me and inside of the company. And it’s not as though you want people to have to deliver bad service or continually botched things up. Like, that’s not the idea with failure. But failure is always an option for us. It’s like a muscle, in order to build a muscle, you’ve got to tear it down in order to get it rebuilt. And the only way that really happens is if you usually find things that aren’t, you know, the way that they necessarily should be, or they fall on your face a few times, and failure. And I think the reason why more people win from our more people have success is you know, the more there was some study about this a few years ago, I remember the exact name, it was a Harvard study, that basically the more failures that you have essentially ends up being more success than most people have. And the reason why behind that was because more people actually stop and reflect about their failures than stop and reflecting about their wins. When you win, whether it’s a game or a sport or a deal, whatever else, it’s easy to just go move on to the next thing because you want to just move on. But more people when you actually fail, you actually start to think like what went wrong? What could I have done? Or should I have said What didn’t go right? Those are things that you actually, you know, tend to be more introspective, because most people don’t have a whole lot of reflection time in this society. They don’t journal or they don’t have quiet time to think about whether what things went good or bad. So failures from that standpoint, there’s a direct correlation to the amount of failure failures that you have, and the success that you usually receive. So I think from that standpoint, I embrace failure. It’s never it’s never comfortable, like ever, you just get like, you know, as the psychologists say, your refractory period shortened. So your refractory period is basically the time that you psychologically hold on to something good or bad or whatever else, that you essentially you just get better at just forgetting, oh is a failure. And the next day you move on, who cares? Like you just it’s, it’s moving on to the next thing. So from my standpoint, I embrace it. Still never comfortable. But one good sleep the next day, it’ll knock it out of your system and you’re moving on to the next thing or you’re solving the problem. always better to me than the regret of not doing something or not taking action. And I think the best example of this was in December of last year, SpaceX Elon Musk, whether you love him or hate him, it’s pretty freaking impressive that the guy has taken a car company. And it’s you know, it’s growing. But not only that, but an electric car and that it’s profitable and then taking that and then launching freaking rockets into space that one dude is doing all of this and taking people to Mars. Well, how many freaking failures Do you think that guy’s had? And I love it. The reason why I bring this up is because there’s SpaceX new big rocket you know, trying to launch to Mars whatever else last December, this amazing rocket not only are they launching it, the dang thing could come back down and land itself so that you can reuse it. Well, you know, they’re trying to launch this new prototype whatever else it comes down in a fiery freaking crash, just fire everywhere. Awful, you know, explosion. And immediately afterwards, Elon Musk tweets out like hell yeah, team SpaceX, like Mars, here we come because massive, very expensive explosion, but they were one step closer to getting it right in order to actually have all of these amazing big things that have occurred. Now, that’s on a massive scale, like 100-million-dollar rockets. Most of our failures are not anywhere near like that. So it’s good for some perspective to a certain degree. But you look at all the stuff that Elon has been able to accomplish. There are so many failures, and I look at that as a good example of you know, what, things aren’t usually that bad. And the more you know, like the Harvard study said, like, the more failures you have, the more is directly correlated to your success. So that’s my sort of take on failure. Again, never comfortable, but I always embrace it because regret is way worse.

Brittany Anderson  19:16

Amen to that one, Draye and you know, as you were giving the example of Elon Musk, I think of three people that are pretty much household names at this point. So Oprah Winfrey, you know, she was fired from her job as an evening news reporter for being unfit for television news. Look at the Empire she’s built. Now. You look at Steve Jobs, another person love him or hate him. He was actually fired from Apple at one point in time, threw himself into his work, came back and was a legendary CEO. When you look at Steven Spielberg, the famous director, he was rejected from the University of Southern California, their school of theater, film and television, three times, three times so he ended up going to a different school, dropped out of that, and then pursued directing, and I think it worked out pretty well. So again, these people, if they would have let those first failures per se, just stop them dead in their tracks, think about all that would be missed. Oh my gosh, put that in perspective for a minute, think everybody in their mother has an Apple phone, right? I don’t have an iPhone, I’m one of those Android weirdos. But you know, for the most part, that’s a household thing that wouldn’t have happened if people would have allowed fear to completely block them and allowed failure to get in the way of their pursuit of what they believed in. You know, I think about this. And when you become successful, because I think this is another big differentiator, when you look at people in history, who have made massive impact. When you become successful or become at the top of your game, it can become easy to become complacent. And I have always said that I would rather be a small part of something amazing than a big part of something mediocre. So that’s a huge driving force for myself when it comes to failing is I fully believe with every ounce of my being, that there is a purpose for every human being on this earth. And the biggest lack is when they don’t lean into that. And when they let failure hold them back. The bottom line is, is you are truly all you need to save yourself from a life of mediocrity, right. So when you think about impact, and you think about what you are put on this earth to do, you are all you need to save yourself from a life of mediocrity, you are all you need to choose courage over comfort, it is up to you to step up to design the life of your dreams. That’s what this is all about. So like Draye said, failure is never fun, I don’t fail and my immediate reaction is that oh my gosh, what a great day. You know, it hurts for a little bit, it bruises your ego, it’s it can be it can be demoralizing, a little bit, right. Like these things are not good. They’re and they don’t feel good. What feels good is when you take the action, and you’re intentional with how you learn from them. So before I go into the few top takeaways from today, Draye, Bryan, anything else at all that you would like to add?

Draye Redfern  22:24

Yeah, I think that just moving past fear as fast as possible, whether it’s a good night’s sleep, whatever you got to do, just let that stuff go. That would be the biggest thing I could say. I love it, embrace it, but I don’t love it, I embrace it, definitely learn how to let those things go faster and shorten that refractory period.

Brittany Anderson  22:45

So good. So that actually leads into one of the first takeaways from today. Again, the reason we do these takeaways is because we want you to actually take action, not just listen to this for you know, entertainment, but actually do things in your business and in your life that are going to help you become even better. So I agree with Draye 100% fail fast, get in that habit of not being afraid of that initial failure, because the faster you fail, the faster you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move forward. And I think Draye brought up a great point too, that sometimes what that requires is you hit that Roadblock, you you have that failure, you practice a little self care, you go for a run, you go get a massage, you you know, take a couple days and just breathe and regroup and then you go back at it. The second part is creating a framework for how you will look at failure. Again, whether you’re the person who likes to throw the big party and make a kind of fun event out of it, or you just go through a thought process of Alright, what actually was good about this, what was not so good. And then how can I make this better going forward? The next takeaway or the third takeaway is to identify one thing in your life. One thing that you have not taken action on because of fear of failure. And if all that you do is you write down what that particular thing is in your life. And you just put that in your forefront. Again, it goes a little woowoo. But when you put things out into the universe that you want to solve, you can’t help your brain can’t help but look for ways to solve for that issue. So I highly encourage you to write down that thing you’re not taking action on. Now the one thing I want to make clear as we round out today’s episode is that in the beginning of this particular session, I said that the only time that you fail is when you quit. Now, that does not mean for all my shiny object chasers out there. That does not mean that you should pursue every single opportunity that comes your way because the danger with what we’ve been talking about when you start overcoming fear. When you’re able to pick yourself up quickly after failure, you’re going to realize there is a ton of opportunity In this world, and the more that you The faster you move through and you’re continually improving and you’re growing as a human being, you are going to all of a sudden see an abundance of opportunity come your way. So the biggest question becomes, is how do you get focused? How do you keep that focus? So that is what we’re going to talk about next week. So that wraps up today’s episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We will catch you right back here next week. 

Brittany Anderson  25:32

Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our Ultimate Advisor Podcast, don’t keep us the 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!