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 

Hello, and welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Brittany Anderson here today with Draye Redfern and Mr. Sweet. And we’re diving into a topic that may make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. So we’re going to talk about how you can make fear work for you. Now, there’s the saying out there that in the business world, the person that you are best suited to serve is actually the person that you used to be. So all of that being said, I know myself and I know Bryan and Draye we’ve all been asked this question or something along these lines of how do you not let fear consume you when you’re taking on a new venture? When you’re starting a new business when you’re diving into something that you have zero certainty towards? How do you do that? Like, how do you just let yourself go into and lean into those new opportunities? Like, isn’t it scary? And we sit there and go? Yes, of course, it’s scary. But one thing we focus on is how can we make fear work for us. So this is something that we do on a daily basis that I can personally attest to, is that I’m constantly looking at how can I put my own fears to work in moving towards my bigger goals. And the pre framing around this that I want to start with is that when you tell the universe, what it is that you want, stay with me here because I know this can feel a little woowoo. But when you put it out into the world, what you really want to accomplish, you are putting good energy in motion, and good energy and motion cannot be stopped by fear. And regardless of what your beliefs are fear and faith towards whatever it is that you want to accomplish, they cannot coexist. Okay, so regardless of again, your religious beliefs or anything like that fear and faith can’t stand together, you have to figure out if you truly believe that something is possible that you are capable, and that you what it is that you want to achieve is meaningful, fear isn’t going to get in the way. So one thing that you could do immediately is to choose something each week that scares you a little bit and then go after it. You know, I can tell you personally, if I’m not doing something every week that makes my stomach hurt a little bit, it probably means that I’m not stretching enough. So make the decision. How can you make your fears work for you? You know, are you scared of picking up the phone and calling that prospect? Are you scared of starting a new business venture? Are you afraid of hiring somebody, because of the time it’ll take or the training involved, or maybe they won’t stick? Maybe they won’t last, you know, whatever it is take a step towards that fear so that you can escalate your business. And one way to do this, and I’m gonna loop Bryan into this in a minute, because I think he can give great testament to this. But one easy simple tactic you can put into play immediately is to write your fear down on a piece of paper. And then right below it write the worst case scenario that could happen. I would be willing to bet that that worst case scenario is really not that bad. And if it is, I mean, if it’s something that’s going to impact your business in some insanely negative way, if you take action on it, or if you move towards and lean into that fear, well, then maybe you need to step back and reassess a little bit but I would tell you 9 times out of 10 that worst case really isn’t that big of a deal. So this allows you to in turn, look at the potential upside look at the game. Look at what you’re set to achieve by overcoming that fear because you know that the worst case scenario is not that bad. So Bryan, you are somebody who you know I look at as a mentor, and who I believe has always let fear really drive your success but in the way that you’ve never let it get in the way you let it be a driver to you so I would love for you to share a little bit of your story and kind of how you’ve put fear to work for yourself.

Bryan Sweet  

This is such an interesting topic. And if I get too long winded on this, be sure and cut me off, because I think I could probably speak the whole podcast on this. But this is, I think, an acquired skill. But I think it’s easy to overcome it once you recognize that fear is actually holding you back. And so when I first got started, I was just like everybody else, I heard you should do this. But I was scared that in a small town, if I did it this way, people would look badly at me. And so I didn’t do it. And when I came to the realization, that literally fear is just, you know, the six inches between my ears. And in reality, it isn’t anything to be scared about, things really got much better, much more quickly. And one of the little things I think you always want to think about is the reason people have fear is that they fear that they’ll be a failure at something, or it won’t go as well as they had liked. And then what will people say? or How will people look at them afterwards, so then they just don’t take any action. But if you look at fear as the, or failure as being either one of two things, it’s either leads to, by doing taking action on that fear, it leads to success. And the worst case scenario, it’s a learning curve. And so you’re never failing, you’re actually just learning, while learning is a great thing. And like all of us know that the more you do something and the more you practice something, the better you get. So I think one of the key things is, you need to, as Brittany alluded to write down things that you fear, write down the worst case scenario. But I think one of the critical things is you’ve got to believe in yourself, and the outcome that that fear presents, because your mindset and your attitude are such huge reasons, while why you do succeed, or why you don’t succeed. And what I will tell you, in so many examples, including myself early on, and just advisors that we coach, is most people give up too soon. So if something doesn’t go well, that first time, then they’re going on a failure, I can’t do that. But if you always go in with that mindset, that no, it’s not a failure, I may not have gotten it right this time. But what did I learn by doing that, that if I fix that, it will go much better next time. So if you use fear, to motivate you, and not scare you, then that will cause you to take action. And action is such a key thing. Nothing good happens unless you do something. And if you don’t do anything, you’re always gonna get the same results you’ve always gotten. And if that’s not acceptable to you, then use fear to motivate you going forward. And one of the examples that I think is really, maybe a good thing to talk about is we can actually serve our clients and help them through fear. Because if us as business owners and financial advisors have fear, then you can well imagine that the average person that doesn’t deal with all the things that we deal with, they might absolutely have that as an issue. And can you imagine how helpful it would be is that if you overcome it yourself, and then you try to help your clients look past that fear of the unknown, and help them create the life they can’t wait to wake up to? What would that really mean to them? And how tied in would they be to you and your services going forward? And that whole concept that I just talked about is literally why we created the dream architect, because there’s really two issues that people face and why people don’t have better lives. And one is they just don’t think they deserve it. They don’t think they should have it. So it’s a mindset or an attitude issue. The other thing is, if they might have a positive attitude, but if they don’t have the financial capacity to live and do the things that their dream life would say they should do or they want to do, then that’s also another hindrance. So you really need somebody to have the financial capacity. And you need somebody to think that they can. And when you mix those two together, that’s so powerful. And that’s really the basis of what the dream architect was meant. But us as financial advisors really only typically focus on the financial part. And we don’t help them overcome some of those fears. So I think that’s really an important thing that you really want to focus on, use it to your advantage. And I can tell you, for one thing, 100% guaranteed that there’s no progress if you do nothing. And so using fear to move forward and get better and use it as a motivation is really, really helpful. So Draye I know we’ve chatted many times about this, and I would love to get your, I want to say maybe tactics, but I think maybe that’s a good word on how to overcome fear.  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 in 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 

You know, fear is something that I think that I don’t necessarily talk maybe enough about, you know, because I think that reality of everyone in their life, regardless of whether you’re a financial advisor, you’re a stay at home mom or dad, you’re running a successful company, you’re doing whatever, everybody has reasons to be anxious or fearful, we’re all going to, we’re all vulnerable to a variety of things, we’re all going to die. There are certainly things out there that would cause actual, you know, anxiety or fear. Most business things shouldn’t necessarily be lumped into that bucket, at least in my opinion. Because I think that there’s a lot of things that we can use. And you think through using the systems and processes we’ve talked about in the podcast a ton of times to mitigate, reduce or eliminate some of those things. However, I think that fears are really healthy stressor, you know, fear used in the right way, could be a radical, unfair advantage that you may have. So, several years ago, I mean, going through this crazy tumultuous time, my wife and I knew what our marriage, you know, just lots of crazy things going on with a particular lawsuit that we were involved in just a lot of things that were going on, that caused a ton of fear of, oh my gosh, are we going to even be able to pay the mortgage next month? Now that does a couple things is that as a man is for me that in order to provide for the family, it creates like that fear was a massive motivator. Well, we ended up winning the lawsuit and yada yada yada, like you know, fast forward several years that I can look back five years ago, and that fear was an absolute catalyst for the trajectory that I am on today. And had that not happened, had I not had those fears that could have potentially have occurred. I definitely don’t think that I would have been where I’m at today. Those sorts of things can make you so I think that fear is a really healthy stressor, one of the awesome top psychologists in the world right now. It’s is a client of ours. And the actual clinical process for this is if you have fear is to actually lay out in detail what the things are that you’re fearful about, list them, all of them. And then you essentially decompose them or deconstruct them into more manageable problems, so that you’re not biting off this massive thing. That’s what was me, I’ve got all of these things and personnel issues and revenue issues. And you know, life on the Homefront is awful, or my kids are listening all of these things like you break it down into something that’s absolutely manageable. And similar to what Brittany and Bryan said earlier, you can then what is the worst case scenario, if all of these things were to go to hell in a handbasket, and they were all go off a cliff? What is the worst case scenario, and then clinically, what ends up happening as a result of a lot of this is that the stress doesn’t necessarily go away, because you still got to deal with these things. But it makes you as an individual, braver and more capable of actually tackling those individual, quote unquote, fears that are no longer fears anymore. And so that’s I think the tactical solution is just really just blank out all out there and realizing what the scenario is, and looking at things as they are, but not worse than they are. We as humans tend to get in our heads and see, and we make problems significantly worse than what they really are. When it comes to growing a business. There’s obviously a lot of fears of like what Bryan said, If like, what are people going to think about me, or what if I say this wrong, or what is you know, what’s going to go on in the community, there’s a saying that was told to me years ago, and it stuck with me, it stuck with me ever since. And that is, if you’d like to build the tallest building, I’d like to have the tallest building in the town, there’s only two ways to have it. The first one is that you can take the time, put in the effort and build the tallest building. And the other is to basically just tear every other building down around you until Yours is the tallest. Well, the people who are the ones that you are usually fearful over you care about their opinions, all of those sorts of things. Those are usually the people that just try to tear other people down to make themselves feel bigger. Those are the people who don’t really do anything with their life. And I’ll tell you, it’s funny, maybe it’s like meaningless. But when I look back, and I was like, you know, I’m not I’m in my, you know, approaching my mid-30s. I don’t feel like I’m as far along as I want to be, do a lot of things got a great team growing things. But I feel as though sometimes that like I’m not accomplishing all of the things that I have wanted to accomplish. But when I take this step back, and I put something in perspective, all the way back a meaningless example. And I’ll look at the people that had me fearful or had me worry, some decades ago, maybe it was high school, someone who was mean to me in high school, you know, they happen to look them up here, there. And like you see what they’re doing these days versus what I’m doing, it makes you feel really good about yourself, you know, because you are, you’re building something, you’re doing something. And if you can go back and you look at other people in your life, and maybe we’re hard on you or criticized you when you were growing your business. Oftentimes, those are the individuals who just tear buildings down. They’re not the ones doing very much in your life. So sometimes just having that perspective, can dramatically eliminate or at least mitigate a lot of the fear that you have. And so there’s another two word saying that I love. I think it came from Tony Robbins, he’s got a couple of them is paralyzed or motorized? Are you going to let fear paralyze you? Or are you going to eat basically use that to create the motor and the engine in which you can get going and use this to your advantage? So paralyzed or motorized? If I’m overcome or overwhelmed with something, that’s one thing that I definitely tend to do is like, is this going to like it might stop dead in my tracks? Is that healthy? It’s not let me you know, figure out a way to motorize get this in action and get going. So I’d say those are definitely the things fear wise is that, you know, if you want to look at the clinical process of things, find out lay out what it is decompose it into manageable tidbits, figure out what the worst case scenario is. And that will not necessarily eliminate it, but it will definitely make you braver and more capable of taking those things on. And then really the, you know, the people who are usually going to be your you’re going to be fearful alive are usually the ones that are not the necessarily the ones that are moving and shaking like you are. So that being said, Brittany, any other insights to wrap us off with this week?

Brittany Anderson 

Yeah, you both actually made me think Tim Ferriss has a great TED talk on fear setting. And really, it frames out a lot of the things that we’re talking about here. So it’s his whole concept is basically saying it’s a really powerful and positive exercise to actually write out your fears to fully envision them, because it’s the only way you can really get to the core of why that fear is present in the first place. So one of the I guess, synopsis of one of the components that he talks about, is not only should you write out your fears, not only should you spell out the words case scenario because it’s often not as bad as what you really think it is. But the other thing to put in conjunction with that is what is the cost of inaction. So Bryan and Draye, both used in different words, but the whole idea of living your dream life of leaning into your potential of pursuing all that you want. And really, if you look at if you’re afraid of the next level in your business, and I’m going to say this, and please take this for what it’s worth, but it’s okay to have fear. So if you’re sitting here, and you’re trying to have that tough exterior, like I’m not afraid, I’m just busy. I’m not afraid I’ve just got a lot on my plate. You know, that’s what we’re doing here is we’re peeling back some layers. So you really have to decide if you don’t take action, if you allow complacency, to be the the motivator to you or to be that thing that ignites your fear. And then you don’t lean into what you’re put on this earth to do. Ooh, that’s a tough one to swallow when you’re looking back and reflecting on your life. So I think that that Ted Talk is a really powerful, and I highly recommend you listen to it. For your setting Tim Ferriss, it’s excellent material. So before I go into kind of a wrap up and top takeaways, Draye, Bryan, is there anything else that you want to throw out there?

Bryan Sweet  

Brittany, I thought that was excellent. So thank you for those comments. I was just going to say, one quick thing. And in my lifetime, I would tell you that all good things have happened when I’ve pushed beyond my fear. And I think if everybody’s just sat down, and really spent time looking at when were the times that I feared something, and I actually went beyond it, and what was the outcome, you’re actually going to find that that outcome was probably exceptionally good and positive in most cases, and use that as the motivation to keep doing those things. When you’ve hit that fear wall again.

Brittany Anderson  

So good. You know, Bryan, you just made me think I think about the first time that I ever did a 10 minute talk at Joe Polish’s Genius Network. In a room full of really high level entrepreneurs, Bryan and Draye both know the feeling because they’ve both given 10 minute talks there. It was so scary, I literally wanted to throw up the whole entire plane ride to Phoenix, Arizona. And I can tell you that by letting the fear work for me, I was more prepared for a presentation than I’ve ever been in my entire life, executed it in a capacity that I don’t think I’ve ever executed on a talk before. Plus, the byproduct of it was I built relationships with people that I probably would not have connected with otherwise had business opportunities come about because of that. And also had the talk that I gave resonated hugely in touch people in an emotional way. So not to go down a different path. But again, it’s just a testament that when you allow your fear to work for you, you’re going to realize what you’re capable of on a whole different level. So going into the top takeaways, the number one thing, if you were to only do one thing from today’s podcast, sit down and write out your biggest fear that you have in your life and or your business right now. Then with that, write out the worst case scenario of what might happen should you pursue it, and then also the cost of inaction. Again, if that’s the one thing that you do, I highly encourage you to go through that exercise, because I think what you’ll find on the other end, is that it’s worth the pursuit. The second thing, and I think Bryan touched on this, but it’s really powerful and important, is to not only decide how you might be able to help your clients through their fears, but to truly put in the effort to understand what those fears are in the first place. I’ve used this analogy before. It’s provocative. It’s from Darren Hardy, and I love it, it resonates and it sticks with people, it’s get in their bed to get in their head. And what that means is that you literally want to understand what are the things that are keeping your clients up at night as it relates to your business, you have to understand that in order to truly solve for the bigger issues. So maybe that fear is what they might be retiring to, you know, we work in in the realm of working with a lot of people who are going through or approaching or are in the life or the phase of life in retirement, what does that look like for them, there’s fears around that, you know, there could be a fear around working with an advisor in the first place. Maybe they’ve never had that experience. And it’s up to you to communicate the value you’re going to bring into their life and how it’s going to positively impact them. It could be a fear of multi generational wealth transfer. I mean, the list goes on and on and on, but it’s up to you to decide Hold and decide how you can be a positive catalyst for overcoming that fear. Now, the last one, and I think this is really important, so put your antennas up, is if you’re sitting here and you’re like, gosh, you know, I don’t really think about fear a whole lot, or this is a tough exercise for me or I don’t even know where to start. The first thing that I would do that I do for myself, is to write out your excuses. What are the excuses that you’re making for yourself right now, both personally and professionally, that are causing you not to take action. So for me, if I sit there and I read it, and I’m like, I don’t have time, I don’t have the capability. I don’t know where to start. I can’t do that. I’ve never done it before. When you actually write those things out, it becomes pretty stinking clear what your fear is. And a lot of times, I think what happens is that fear truly boils down to one thing, it’s that people want to avoid failure. So we’re going to continue on that path in next week’s episode, as we’re going to help you look at how seeing failure can actually be an opportunity for growth. So I’m not going to give away the farm. We’re going to end it right there. But be sure to tune in next week, because we’re going to go deep into how you can create opportunities from missing the mark. So that wraps up this episode of your ultimate advisor podcast. We will catch you right back here next week.

Brittany Anderson  

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.