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 create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed up, you’ll be joined by your hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to hire 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 into another amazing episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. 

Brittany Anderson:

Welcome back to your ultimate advisor podcast here with you again, Brittany Anderson, Draye Redfern, and Bryan Sweet. And we are going to carry out the final part of our three-part series on health, wealth, and happiness with today being happiness. And honestly, for us, we’re all a bunch of happy people. So this is quite possibly the most fun topic to speak on. But before you go and shut this off thinking, oh my gosh, here they go with the woo-woo stuff. That’s really not what this is about. You know, true happiness, if you think about it, it’s really about finding what sparks your soul. So I think back to so many advisors that we’ve consulted with over the years that have lost the spark. And especially if you think about what’s happened in the midst of this pandemic with COVID-19 and all of that stuff that we’re all tired of hearing about, talking about and living in, but the reality is it exists.

 And it’s interesting because a lot of advisors we’ve spoken with throughout this period of time, they’re kind of at this weird gap where it’s like, I don’t know, why am I doing this, like we’re kind of climbing uphill, both ways in the snow and really forgot why they got in this business in the first place. I think that can happen too, just after over time, your interests change, what you’re passionate about changes and people get so stuck in, well, I don’t know how else to do it. This is how I’ve always done it. So this is just how life is, this is how things have to be. And it’s so not the case. I sit there and I scratch my head.

 I just had a call with an advisor recently who was like, I’m buried, I’m stressed. I’m not getting to anything that I want to be getting to because it’s an election year and we’ve got this pandemic and we’ve got … and I stopped them. And I’m like, but really, why is this happening? And they kind of paused. Like, well, what do you mean, it should be obvious. And I’m like, no, why is this happening? And he couldn’t give me an answer. So I finally said it’s happening because you’re allowing it. And that’s a little bit of tough love, but really, if you think about happiness, we have a heck of a lot more control over this particular element in our life than we like to give ourselves credit for. So yes, you could let the uncertainty of an election year bog you down. You could let the pandemic and some of the bad stuff that’s happened with it really affect you and affect your mental space and all of that. Or you could choose to try to find a silver lining, even if it’s small, even if it’s, today I woke up and my family is healthy and my kids are healthy or hey, I woke up and I get to serve clients. I don’t have to, I get to.

 So it’s those little shifts in thought process and in thinking, and in understanding and going back to the foundation of why you got into this in the first place. So if you’re listening to this and you’re trying to answer that question for yourself and don’t give some surface answer about like, well, I got into it for sales. It’s like, yeah, maybe kind of, but people who end up helping people and serving people have a deeper why than that. So one way that you can kind of flip the switch from getting out of that funk or getting out of that loss of interest or reigniting your spark is to think about the impact that you’ve had.

 So where have you had the biggest impact in one of your client’s lives? Just one, right? I’m not making you think about the whole list and the whole gamut of all of your clients and all the great things you’ve done, but one person where you can really say that I made a difference, I helped to change their life. I helped to make their life better. So think about that. Think about your moment of impact. And then the other thing to do when you look at increasing happiness, at reigniting that spark and in trying to get rid of, or minimize some of the negative is to think about what for you, makes the weight of the world go away. What is your definition of pure bliss? And the point of those questions is to do more of that. Like don’t just think about it and speak to it, but actually commit to doing more of those things.

 So if for you, you feel the weight of the world is lifted when you’re on the golf course or pure bliss is looking at your grandkids faces, my goodness, do more of that. And pay attention to the fact that that actually does lift your spirits and then that does make you feel fulfilled. And that you actually have things that can create bliss in your life. When you start counting your blessings and you start focusing on gratitude and you really start looking at how you make a difference in your clients’ lives, your team’s lives in your family’s lives by focusing and building and creating what you’ve created up to this point, that’s where happiness really comes into play.

 So Bryan, you have a huge focus on gratitude. I know that that has helped you over the years, overcome some frustrating times, some dark times. Can you share and talk a little bit about that?
 

Bryan Sweet:

Yeah. I’d love to Brittany. I think when I think about happiness, I think maybe one of the key things it boils down to is the more grateful for everything that you have and things that go on in your life, that is one of the big things that really leads to happiness. And one of the joys of getting a chance to do the podcast and being in the Ultimate Advisor coaching platform is you two are always grateful and happy and so that’s kind of contagious so that is fun. But when you think back on gratitude, really, if you looked at that every single day, there’s something that happened that was a positive. Now you may have to struggle a little bit to think of what it is and why it applies at that particular point, but we are so fortunate.

 And as we’ve alluded to in previous podcasts with everything going on with the pandemic and COVID, especially now there’s many, many things that we may not have even thought of that we could be grateful for that may seem small, but they’re huge. Having a job and a great career and being able to help people like Brittany said and leave an impact and make sure if somebody else is going through a hard time, helping make that as smooth and less stressful is something to be grateful, you have the capability of being able to do that. And so the key is to remind yourself, to write down or recognize gratitude. So one of the things we’ve talked about in previous podcasts is start your day or end your day and write out gratitude. Now this is a shameful plug, but I’ll do it anyway.

 One great way of doing this is, Brittany and I wrote a book called Imagine, Act, Inspire. And it’s a really interesting book and it’s very simple and it’s comments because it only does three things. There’s a quote of the day, there’s two items to be grateful for, and the three things that you want to get done in the day. And I was just on, I believe you were also on that, Brittany, on a webinar where the host of it held up the book and he uses it every single day and said, it’s the best thing that he’s done to recognize little things to be grateful for. So if that’s helpful, that might be one way or just get a piece of paper out every day and write it down. But it’s amazing, if you do that with any consistency, you will just notice a big change.

 I think the other thing is, you need to focus on being happy. It’s a mindset. So you get to choose whether you want to be happy or sad, so choose happy. And then you have to understand as Brittany alluded to, well, what you know makes you happy and let’s do more of that and let’s do less of the things that you don’t like. So what that means is, there’s that concept we’ve talked about before called who versus how. So if you find yourself doing a lot of things that you don’t like that make you sad or grumpy or something like that, write those down and come up with a who that can do them, because I will tell you that for everything you hate to do, there’s another person out there that actually loves doing that and you just need to find who they are.

 And the other thing is maybe write these things down on a stop doing list. So maybe your goal in 2021 is to write down every single thing that doesn’t make you happy and then put a line next to it, who can do that for me. And as you do them, check them off. And I’d love to hear back from you if you do that, because I think you’ll find it amazing, the results that you get, if you just slowly but surely find some who’s for all the things that you do not like to do. And one of the other things I think is a great mindset that when you talk about happiness, this fits in very, very well.

 And Joe Polish, who started the Genius Network has a term called ELF, E-L-F, and HALF, H-A-L-F. And ELF stands for easy, lucrative and fun. And everybody should make their life ELF because HALF is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Well, who would want that? And so what you need to do as an individual is just define what in your life is ELF, do more, and what’s HALF and start shedding those things or finding others to do it, if it’s a duty that needs to be done and it’s just that it doesn’t need to be you that’s doing it. So, Draye, what are your thoughts on that? Any additional comments?
 

Draye Redfern:

As usual, I always have a couple of things to weigh in with. I love this stuff, man. I’ll tell you what, About a year or two ago, there was a towel that was bought for me for the office, that it was like a unicorn it says, “You’re so happy, you must expletive rainbows.” And that sort of describes me to a T. It’s just, it’s my nature. It’s my demeanor. But more than anything, it’s a choice. I’m sort of laughing as I’m saying this. It really is though, it’s a choice. In my life, and I’ve shared a little bit about this previously. I’ve had two near death experiences with a heart operation and then, well, I guess death experiences that just didn’t stick is how I like to describe them.

 And then the second one that I was hit by a car and basically dragged while riding a bike, my road bike. And so for me having had that, at slightly younger ages now with kids, et cetera, I have a lot to be grateful for every day. And it’s one of these things where, I don’t know anybody who likes to be around negative people, they’re like really just thrive the joy in it and just man, I just really love that person’s negative energy and I want to be around. I’ve never heard anyone ever say that. And so, as a result of that, I just tend to think that negative people don’t close business, they don’t grow their businesses. They don’t really move forward. They stay stagnant. Or at least that’s the story that I tell myself. So if I have a choice, my choice is to be happy because happy people you hear this often, they’ve got great energy.

 I want to be around them. They uplift me. They’re really enjoyable to be around. I want to be around that person more often. I like the energy, whatever else did they have, all of these sorts of things are conversations that happen so if you’re going to be one or the other, I would choose to be happy, done deal. But it’s not that simple, we all know that. There’s good days and bad days, et cetera. So one of the things that I’ve done and I literally do them every year at the start of the year is called the wheel of life. I don’t remember who came up with it. Maybe it’s a Jim Roan thing or it’s been around for a long time. And essentially it’s eight segments of your life from like health, your finances, your romantic relationship, your friends and family, et cetera, it’s eight different categories.

 And you can rate yourself from one to 10 on this wheel. And what you ended up seeing is, and you can just Google it. You’ll find it. It’s very easy to find you rate yourself from a zero to a 10 and it sort of sees the balance in which your life is at. And so if you’re spending too much time in one area and not the other, not a very well balanced life, and that tends to take a drag on happiness in some capacity, whether you realize it now or do you realize it later. So I track that and I literally, I get them mounted and it sits next to my desk. And so I literally stare at that of what my actual wheel of life goals are for the entire year. And that helps for me to keep well balanced and well-rounded, which for me helps me to be happier because I recognize life is more than just business and sales and money or marketing or all of the other sorts of things.

 So that’s one thing, but I also track my happiness on a daily basis, as we said in one of the last episodes, I track everything now. And so literally happiness for me, I track it on a daily basis. Now my benchmark may be higher than someone else so I rate it just for me. It’s geared just towards me. So if I’m rating myself and I do it, so it’s binary, negative two to positive two, whether it’s a neutral day, basically a positive or negative, very, very easy to sort of tell. Zero, my even keel day is maybe higher than most, but it helps me to know where I’m feeling and where maybe I need to pull back from a few other things or look at the rest of where my aspects are on my wheel of life or my tracking, it helps to give perspective. And if my perspective is off, then it’s really good to shift that. So that’s one thing.

 The second thing that I’d say that sort of helps me to stay in a state of happiness longer and more pronounced, are sort of two things, gratitude, just like Bryan said, being grateful for everything, but the second would be minimizing the ruts. We all have ruts. You’re rolling down the highway, you get the flat tire, it’s completely unexpected. You get an email that completely shifts how the rest of your day is going to go. We all have those two by fours that smack us upside the head when we’re least expecting it. That cause our attention to be focused elsewhere, our emotion or energy to be focused elsewhere. And that is just part of life. You can try and mitigate it. Great. Well done, but you can’t avoid it. It’s just part of life.

 So for me, I think one of the states that keep my happiness the highest is finding the ways to minimize my ruts. So my wife, we have an unspoken thing, like a code. Every time, if I have a hard day or if my mental state is slightly off or rough or whatever the scenario is, I literally go next door. And the first thing that I say to her is can I have a hug? That’s literally like the unspoken thing and that’s it. Then that one simple sentence cues up how she reacts with me the rest of the night and how I’m treated and just basically what I need to mitigate my downside. And so that’s me having a significant other that’s, we’ve been together for seven years, so we have a thing.

 Maybe you have a thing with your significant other, but I’ve created that. And we had a conversation about this because I need to be at the best, as much as possible. It can’t be every time because that’s unrealistic, but as much as possible so that I can be the best example to our children and the best husband to my wife and the best employer, boss, to my team. So building in systems like that to mitigate the ruts, because it’s very easy to say, you get a nasty email or something happens and you’re dwelling on it for a day or two days or three days or fast forward, six years later, I still haven’t talked to my mother because that one time 18 years ago or seven years ago, she said this, and I’m never forgive her. Well, we all hold onto these sort of things or this negative baggage or whatever else. So for me, that’s one of the ways to stay at a high happiness, high elevated mental state by building in the systems and minimizing the ruts to help make that happen. So maybe there’s a few other things to unpack there, Brittany, but I love talking about this stuff.
 

Brittany Anderson:

So Draye, I think you bring up, well, first of all, I have to say, I’m really upset that I didn’t find that towel to send to you before whoever else did because it’s so true. So I have to kind of chuckle at that, but, I think you brought up a really interesting point and talking about kind of the unspoken agreement between you and your wife and identifying what you need and what she needs in turn to understand. Ooh, it was rough. Okay. So we’re going to pay attention to this and whatever. I think the important theme there for people to embrace is that you have to identify what can turn you around. It’s funny because my husband and I have something similar. I’ll just walk up and be like, yep, need that bear hug. And that’s a total flip for me.

 And it comes into, I think about the basketball court and I’ll use this analogy, in a lot of the professional basketball teams, they’ll physically touch the door before they go into the gym for practice, they have to touch the doorframe. And what that means is you’re checking your stuff at the door. And the same thing when you leave, you’re ticked on the court, or you have something to work on, you’re going to tap out when you go. And part of that is just understanding that we all have rough days and it’s unrealistic to say that that happiness factor isn’t going to be affected, even with some of the most positive, happy people that I know. Draye being one of them. We all hit these bumps, we all hit these roadblocks. We all hit these points in life where things feel a little tough.

 I tend to be a very positive, optimistic person. And I have that too. And a lot of times I think this is important to point out. And I think Draye, again, you just made me think about this is when you’re on your game in your business, you have a lot of control and you are able to kind of rule the roost in your own way or whatever that may look like. And you go home, you don’t want to be a drained version of yourself. You want to show up for your family, just like you show up for your clients. So think about that, think about that measure of happiness. I think that what Draye does there and tracking kind of that, how am I today? Where am I at? And finding those trigger points that can affect you one way or the other.

 I almost think it could be taken even a step further to be done in the office and at home, because for myself, I know, and I have an awareness that if I have a super jam packed day at work, I’m stressed out or things maybe didn’t go as well as I would have hoped or whatever. I find myself sometimes being a little bit more short with my kids or being a little more annoyed with my husband or whatever the case is. And I have to stop and be like, well, wait a second, why are they taking the brunt of something that they had nothing to do with? So that’s also finding that balancing act in happiness and deciding, literally deciding for yourself that regardless of what happened to me, I can’t control that. What I can do is flip the switch and say, I’m going to figure out a way that that just happened for me.

 Even if I can’t find it right now, at some point I will. But what I am going to do is I’m going to control my attitude and my energy because that’s really all we’ve got. That’s really all we can control. If it boils down, those are the two things you can control in this life is your attitude and the energy you bring to others. And if you find yourself more often than not bringing negative energy to others versus positive, it’s probably time to do that self assessment. And to really do a gut check as to where am I at? Why is this triggered and why do I feel the way I feel? So again, it goes back to self-awareness and that’s why this whole topic of happiness is so much more than the woo-woo stuff. It’s so much more than just the touchy, feely, warm fuzzies. That stuff is all fine and good, but it really goes deeper. It’s how you show up for people. And it’s how you show up in your life. We only get one go around, right? I don’t know anything about reincarnation, but I know that I’ve only existed once, I think, so really making the most of it and then understanding what your happiness is. So Draye and Bryan, anything either of you want to add before we round out with our top takeaways from today?
 

Bryan Sweet:

I think this has been really, really interesting. And I guess, Brittany, I’d love your perspective on the concept of, I need a hug that you would use maybe when you get home, but what would you think, because we spend probably more time at the office than you spend at home. And so if you’re having a bad day, is there something that we should be all aware of or some sign we can give the staff that would accomplish the same thing while you’re here, but also allow you to go, oh yeah, I need to change my frame of reference a little bit so that by the time you get to the end of the day, maybe you don’t even have to worry about, I need a hug because it’s all better.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah. So, I think that’s an interesting question, Bryan, and it’s funny because I’ve actually done some of these things with the team where we have some people that they will actually come and be like, I need a hug. Now we’re in the middle of a pandemic so you’re not supposed to touch anybody. And with how our team is, we’re all a bunch of huggers and you’re not going to get somebody that feels satisfied from an elbow bump, sorry, it’s not going to happen. So another thing that I’ve encouraged the team members to do and that I’ve actually asked for myself is, make me laugh, show me something funny. Tell me something funny. And it’s interesting because some of it probably can’t be repeated, but some of the stuff that people come up with is hilarious and it takes two minutes and then you’ve got everybody laughing and it’s just that good kind of stress reliever.

 It’s like, okay, you’re putting things in perspective again. So that’s another way that I encourage, and I’ve done this actually with teams where sometimes you just have to walk into a room and be like, make me laugh. I don’t care what it is. I need something to laugh at. So Bryan, I think that’s such a great question and it’s so relevant and we all, again, we all have stressful days. And again, if you can kind of flip that switch before you even walk in the door at home, I think that’s really powerful and impactful.

 Well, let’s round this out, before I get into the three takeaways that I made note of all we were talking here, there’s this one statement that always kind of screams and rings in my head. And that’s when you’re assessing the things you allow in your life and where you allow your attention to go, if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. So I want to leave you with that. I want you to really think about that. What in your life right now is bogging you down, is causing you frustration, is sucking the happiness out of you, is really taking you away from finding that pure bliss that we talked about in the beginning. You need to start saying no to some of those things.

 And I think what happens too, when we’re high achievers or we’re pleasers, and that can be the case for advisors because you work with clients and you’re trying to make them happy. And you’re in that service position where it’s easy to kind of sacrifice yourself and your own wellbeing, because you want to say yes to everything. So what can you start saying no to? So that’s one thought that I wanted to leave you with.

 But top three takeaways, the first one, I think you got to identify what your bliss is, really understanding what makes you happy and how can you do more of that? The second one, and I loved what Bryan talks about with gratitude. Parts obviously were biased to it. We created a whole journal for it, but really, truly, even if you took out a piece of scratch paper and you just wrote down every morning and every night, or trigger points during the day, if you find yourself frustrated, I’ve personally done this and it absolutely changes your mindset is if you’re in the heat of being frustrated of being angry or annoyed or whatever the case is, sit down and write out a few things you’re grateful for. Even if the only thing you can muster is, I had a really good cup of coffee this morning and I’m just going to sit and savor that for a minute.

 Sometimes that’s all we can find, but the point is it’s changing your mindset intentionally. And I think to go hand in hand with that, when you think about practicing gratitude and being intentional, it’s also about being intentional of your own happiness, being aware of where you’re at. But I think the most important thing that Draye said today, more than anything else is he’s not comparing himself against a friend or a family member or some influencer somewhere who seems like they’re always positive. He’s comparing against himself. That’s a true benchmark right there, because I will tell you, I am more positive than a lot of people out there, but there are people out there that have heck of a lot more energy and positivity than I do even.

 So if I were to sit and compare myself to somebody else, that would put me into a really negative mindset of what Dan Sullivan calls is, the gap. You’re looking at how far you have to go versus how far you’ve come. So measuring against yourself and having that self-awareness I think is more important than what people realize. And then finally, Bryan brought this up and I think this is gold and it’s creating that stop doing list. What are the things, again, if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. So what are the things that are nos in your life and actually writing them down. This is something that I’m trying to be more and more intentional about myself is instead of just saying, gosh, you know, that’s really frustrating. I don’t really want to do that anymore. Write it down and make it a point to get that checked off your list, to find a who that enjoys that so that you can have that mental freedom.

 So that rounds out to today’s episode. Now you’re in for a real treat over the next few weeks because myself, Bryan and Draye are all individually going to share with you our favorite episode that we have already recorded. So you are going to want to tune in because it might give you a sneak peek into how we each think individually, where we see ourselves giving the biggest impact and how we can continue to serve you, our wonderful adviser audience. So that’s coming up over the next few weeks. You will not want to miss out. So that rounds out of this episode of the Ultimate Advisor podcast, we will catch you right back here next week.

 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 just 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.