Growing a successful financial advisory practice is one of the most challenging endeavors anyone can choose to undertake. The road to success is riddled with the many mistakes financial advisors make along the way, such as not prospecting consistently, not marketing themselves, or failing to provide their clients with an exceptional experience. These and other mistakes are symptomatic of a much bigger mistake many advisors make: spending too much time working in their business and not enough time working on the business.
What’s holding you back?
For advisors at any stage in their business, it can be the difference between being proactive and looking into the future versus living in a reactive world that never seems to go the way they want. It can also be the difference between success and failure.
With most advisors, the only person setting goals and thinking about the future is the advisor. Who else is more genuinely motivated to grow the business?
It is the advisor’s responsibility to identify problems and delegate solutions. However, every minute spent working in the business on tasks that can be delegated is a minute not spent working on the business—planning and strategizing to get to the next level.
The Advisor’s curse is self-destructive
To ensure their success, financial advisors must rid themselves of the “advisor’s curse.” That’s how Investor News labeled the condition that makes advisors feel “like you have to do everything yourself…of wanting to be in control of everything all the time because you don’t believe anybody can do what you do as well as you can.”
Of course, that’s hogwash. No advisor can wear all hats all the time if they expect to grow their business. And frankly, most advisors aren’t very good at administrative or back-office tasks, which are essential but do little to grow the practice.
How self-destructive is an advisor’s failure to delegate non-essential functions and tasks? Consider the findings of analysts at Independent Financial Partners (IFP), who studied the issue in depth. They found that out of 53.3 hours of a typical workweek, advisors spend 22.1 hours on administrative and back-office tasks. That’s 41.4 percent of their workweek—the equivalent of three full business days spent on non-revenue generating tasks!
The Remarkable rewards of delegation
To grow their practice, advisors must create the conditions that allow them to focus almost exclusively on their core competencies and those activities that lead directly to revenues and profits. That requires delegating all non-revenue generating activities to staff or outsourcing them to outside specialists.
That can require extra resources and time—to get staff or service specialists trained and establish an oversight structure for monitoring and measuring their performance. But the results can be astonishing. Giving up control of those aspects of your business that you don’t even like doing can have a massive, positive impact on your bottom line.
Imagine being able to focus most of your time on:
- Client-facing activities
- Marketing your brand and building visibility
- Strategizing business development
- Elevating your client experience
- Continuing your education and self-development
- Building a more efficient operation around a motivated team
- Achieving a healthier work-life balance
In other words, strong delegation allows you to spend significantly more time working on your business than in your business, which can be the difference between growing it and getting hopelessly lost in it.
Related: Stop Justifying Your Fees and Start Explaining Them in the Context of What Your Prospects Value