Rosemary Smyth's blog

No one succeeds in life without making mistakes. For some, the investing world is a place to learn whatever lessons life has to teach them and then they move forward with wisdom. This gleaning what you can from the past is far different from those who punish themselves for mistakes made and living with regret. All of us have had circumstances from our past that we would like to change.

When people ask you if you are more of a task-person or a people-person they are usually asking if you are more concerned with the work at hand rather than forming relationships. Most people are more than just one or the other and some of today’s roles are demanding that you be a combination of both.
We see teams that really work well together when they have both types of people. It’s important that the roles of the team showcase their default setting, as in having a task-person doing admin and a people-person meeting with clients.

A success plan is a combination of an action plan and business plan, mixed in with your values and dreams. It encourages you to consider a vision of your business that is barely believable and to stretch you in taking risks and embracing challenges.

An Abundant Mindset and Scarcity Marketing

An abundant mindset is based on plenty being available with enough to share. It also focuses your thoughts on the long-term instead of having to have something right now. The phrases that you hear from someone who has an abundant mindset are: “there are lots of assets out there for me to prospect”, “I have a huge circle of connections” and “there are a ton of good stocks out there to buy”.

It’s been a safe bet to prospect older clients in order to meet production and asset goals, as that is where the largest concentration of wealth can be found. That has been the trend for younger as well as older advisors. However, we are now experiencing in the investing industry a time where the average age of clients is moving from 62 to an expected 70 over the next several years and the average age of advisors is at 52.

Financial planning professor John Grable conducted research into a prospective client’s level of financial anxiety and physiological arousal that would lead them to engage in a proactive planning process. His conclusions were that a prospective client had the highest level of planning intention when they had low financial anxiety and high physiological arousal.

From the results of Grable’s research we can now look for ways move prospective clients into this optimal planning zone of low financial anxiety and high physiological arousal.

One of the most common definitions of best practices is, “a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark”. For some advisors learning best practices comes from coaching, training, mentoring or trying out ideas and seeing what works. The vast majority of advisors understand that it is necessary to operate their business by systems and processes and unfortunately for the ones that enjoy random happenings, it just isn’t very efficient.

When we reflect about our job performance last year, we usually ask ourselves, did we reach our goals and what did we learn from last year’s experiences. We can also ask specific people for feedback and comments on how they felt about our job performance and any areas that we need to pay more attention to. When we ask for feedback, we’re looking for concrete feedback that deals clearly with particular incidents and our behaviour.

There is a famous quote by Lewis Carroll that says, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” Having a vision and knowing where you want to go is one of the cornerstones of your business. By communicating what it is you want your business to look like, you will be able to focus your intentions and create a foundation for making decisions and evaluating opportunities. Having a compelling vision for your business also helps clients to understand what your business “really” is and how you can provide solutions to their needs.

Since effective goal setting takes practice, I’ve chosen four books that I feel would be excellent resources for those that really want to set and achieve their goals. I’ve written a short book review on each of them and feel that each author’s approach to goal setting is unique. A couple of the books are more scientific and research based while the other two are quite straightforward and easy to digest. I’m sure you’ll get some valuable tips from each one of them so before you set your goals this year have a read though these four books.