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Have you ever thought your car was out to get you? Or that your car was obsessed with obliterating itself like a moth communing with a hurricane lamp? Death fascinated with on coming traffic, like your dog who drags you across the street to meet his tail wagging buddy. When cars don the kamikaze headband it’s because its wheels are out of alignment. It will either pull you to the left or right and if you let go of the wheel for just a second you could be toast. When your vehicle is out of alignment it’s a white knuckle affair and no way can you handle your cappuccino. It takes a lot of effort to drive any car that is misaligned. The same principle applies to business as well as the individual. I submit, to run any business it requires energy and that energy is guided by your attention which then leads to proper action. The truth of the matter is that your energy is finite. You don’t have an unlimited supply of energy in any given day. Your high quality attention is actually quite limited. I can prove this to you by having you do, back to back to back appointments and let’s see how you feel three hours later. When I say energy I don’t mean the California aura crap, no offense to Governor Moon Beam. I mean drive, determination, and chutzpa, you got a full tank of gas and are ready to soar! But what happens when you jump into your turbo charged Dodge Charger, punch the gas and your tires are misaligned? If you are in a Wal-Mart parking lot, you make big circles, if you are on the highway, your car may slip the surly binds of the earth and tumble down, down, down!
A leading cause of Financial Advisor crashes is from misalignment of their own finances! It’s amazing how many advisors can not handle their own money! They have big houses, fancy cars and are swimming in debt, but they look good! Going nowhere but looking good driving their nice cars in a circle! Many advisors dream is to have high net worth clients, but how can you be a proponent of managing a person who has proven that they can create wealth if you can’t handle your own? This misalignment often keeps the advisor swimming in the small fish pond. They lack the genuineness that is required to land high net worth individuals.
A siren song of advisor crashes is not being in alignment with their family. An advisor needs to decide if his family is in first position or second position. Now everyone is reading this and telling themselves no way, my family is always in first position. Ok what does that mean really? Do they really take priority? And what does that priority look like? Since most advisors never define this, they are left with the gift of guilt. Define what that means to you and your family. For example, you are home for dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and prospecting/networking the other days. Family vacations are booked in advanced and are always taken no matter what the market is doing. To thine own self, be true. If your family is really in second position be truthful to yourself and to them. Believe me, divorces are expensive and the root of all divorces is miscommunication. A client of mine who works for a large insurance firm is busy playing Mr. Mom as his wife re-enters the workforce, which is awesome. But now that there is a domestic disruption my client is beginning to miss scheduled appointments because of kid issues. Understandable, right? But if we begin to look at the numbers, his lack of planning, or creating alternatives does not make sense. On average my client earns $1,000 for every appointment he goes on, which we figured out by dividing his commissions for the last 90 days by the total number of appointments that he had. Hopefully something is jumping off the page at you. If he missed 3 appointments in a week he lost $3,000. I am convinced he could have paid one of his friends or neighbors a $100 to taxi the kids around and he would be positive $2,900. It’s easy to slip into a prison of inadvertence. Since we enlightened him on this behavior he is course correcting.
Another misalignment is over commitment. Which is about being over scheduled, too many boards, too many charity events, too many networking events, too many marketing campaigns, too many products, too many clients, too much follow up, and too much servicing which all lead to overwhelm. The car is very fast and powerful and it’s really ripping around that parking lot! Round and Round it goes, not going anywhere but it’s fast! Advisors often confuse being busy with being effective! Being oh so busy that you don’t have time for anything else is an act of mental laziness. The hard truth is most of what you do, along with most of your clients don’t really matter. We all know of the 80/20 rule but few people actually practice the art of discernment. So the majority of the too many boards, too many networking events along with all the other too many stuff to do, needs the sword of discernment! It will free up energy so you can give attention to the things that actually matter. How many newspapers do you really need to read? How many wholesalers do you really need to see? How many products do you really need to be an expert on? How many designations do you really need? Discernment, Discernment, Discernment.
When an advisor is in alignment quite simply there are less distractions and he has more energy to focus on serving. The first step is to take your hands off the wheel and to notice if your car starts, to don the kamikaze headband, if you feel the tug for the abyss it’s time to go to a mechanic! The mechanic for your financial practice as well as yourself is Getting Results Coaching, so go ahead and complete the personal assessment and imagine how much more you could create if you were in alignment! If an airplane going from New York to LA is just 2 degrees misaligned on take off and doesn’t course correct where does it land? I have no idea but I do know its not LA! Smart airplane people out there post an answer.
Ken Doyle is a dynamic speaker, author and business coach. If you are interested in booking him for your next event please visit www.kendoylespeaks.com or send an email to kate@kendoylespeaks.com.
For individual coaching please go to: www.gettingresultscoaching.com
Also check out Ken Doyle’s new book The Journey, An Evolution of a Financial Advisor:
Kindle: The Journey on Kindle
ePub(eReader, iBooks, Nook, etc…): The Journey on ePub
