Episode 252 – Shortening the Curve to Success: Focused Learning and Application

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 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 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 01:07

Welcome back to your ultimate advisor podcast, Brittany Anderson here today with Draye Red Fern and Brian sweet. And we are going to talk on a topic that we get asked about probably more than than just about anything else. For those of you who have followed us for quite some time now you know that we are constantly reading new books, absorbing new material focused on learning, focusing on expanding our capabilities. So we get asked the questions of what are you tuning into right now? What are the resources out there that are the best for what we’re focusing on? And what are some of the habits of some of the most successful advisors that you encounter? So that’s what we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks is, what are the habits of some of the most successful people out there? And how can you replicate or implement those into your business currently. So you can actually look up statistics on this. But there are studies around that show that most people actually don’t even crack open a book, after high school or college, it is alarming. It is actually really scary to think about that after you’re done with the I guess, forced school, that you don’t expand your knowledge or expand your capabilities beyond that. So this is something that’s really important to press on is that anytime people come to us for resources, you know, we’re constantly referring back to books, I mean, you could listen back or read through show notes and all of the previous episodes, and you’ll see that we’re constantly dropping material that we found to be valuable over time. So one thing that I recommend there is pick one aspect of your business, it could be you know, maybe you need to focus on enhancing the capabilities of your leadership team. Or maybe you need to dive deeper into your systems and processes. Or you need to get creative with your marketing efforts. You know, whatever it is, but pick one area of focus and find supporting material around that one topic versus going too broad versus, you know, getting pulled in too many different directions. The importance in expanded learning is just finding one thing and going all in. And this is kind of a side note. But I think if we look at this, and if we could teach our children, if we could teach our team members from the time they come on board, get everybody accustomed to being hungry for knowledge and being curious because curiosity breeds resourcefulness. So I think about that, whether you’re thinking about your kids in your family, or you’re thinking about your team and your business, having that be an area of focus immediately upon hire, and or at a young age, that’s where you’re able to instill the right habits. This is something to when we look at our team at Sweet, we every single quarter, I work with our team members to find something to help them become an even better version of themselves. And the interesting thing is that this doesn’t always have to be business every single quarter, it can be something where they’re focusing on some aspect of personal development. The point here is that we are a culture of lifelong learners. And again, it doesn’t have to be somebody that wants to climb the totem pole or move positions in the company or scrape their way to the top per se. We have plenty of people who are completely comfortable and completely happy and working within their unique abilities within the current role that they have. And that’s where they want to be and we’re happy that they’re there. But what we also want to see happen is for them to continue to expand and grow as human beings. So that’s really the theme of this first podcast of this series is how can you focus on being a lifelong learner? How can you avoid being that statistic of people who you know, don’t crack open a book after high school or don’t crack open a book after college or don’t you know, expand and, and really grow their knowledge or their capability So, Brian, you are somebody that has really, you know, as the founder of the company, this is something that you have put into place, this is something you live by yourself. So I would just like you to talk a little bit about how you’ve embraced this, why this is important and, and really why you believe this to be such a major contribution to success in our business.

Bryan Sweet 05:20

Yeah, this has been a big thing for us and something I learned at a relatively young age. And for, as you say, longtime listeners will have heard me talk about my aunt Jean. And she was a high school principal, and really taught me the benefits of learning and getting better all the time. And it’s fortunately stuck with me, and I continue to use it today. And so I’m so thankful that she was there to give me good guidance and the skill sets that I needed to, to learn from that and apply it to work and other aspects of life. But it is something that I’ve embraced. And I do think it’s a really big reason why we’ve done what we’ve done over the years. And it’s kind of like the concept of retire while you work concept. And I think if you build this correctly, and you’re always learning, what’ll happen is you’ll only be doing things that you really enjoy and get pleasure and you know, success out of and, and then why would you not want to continue to do that if your life continued to get better, all the time. And I think one of the things that we can be very helpful with is one, understand the concept and apply it to ourselves. Because it’s one of those things, if you’re not growing, you’re really dying, if you think about it, and that’s both in your business and personal life. But irregardless of doing it for yourself, one of the things that I think we should all be aware of is how can you help your clients do the same. So if you learn some great pieces of information, or if you’re reading a particular book, and it helps a business owner, why not send multiple copies to your clients, with a little note in the book saying, Hey, I just read this and had a big impact on my life, or chapter seven was particularly impactful. And I think it applies to your business also. And I think if you think about that, and every time you learn something, add one step to say, Are there any clients that this would apply to, and just jot down a quick list of what it is maybe it’s a piece of paper, maybe it’s an article you read, maybe it’s a book, or a course that you just went to, or a speaker that you heard, share it with your clients. We’re very fortunate in this industry to get some amazing access to people and concepts. And most industries have no clue or have no access to the quality of the information, and the people that we get to meet. And when I’ve done this in the past, they’re so grateful, and they’ve never heard of this before. So take that one concept. And if you do anything today, you know, learn from that. And one of the things is that, you know, as you learn things always take time to absorb it, and also implement these things. So as we’ve alluded to before, lots of things that we do at the office, Brittney and I actually go to the same courses together. And we learn different things. And she’s much better at getting the team to engage with that. But there’s so many different ways to learn today, where it actually doesn’t take up any extra time. So for example, if you like to work out, well, why not listen to podcasts during that hour that you’re walking or you’re on the elliptical machine or your peloton, those are great things and maybe instead of watching TV, reading a good book, listening to some broadcasts that you like, and it’s just really making it a habit to build it into your calendar. And you will be amazed at the results if you just continually try to up your game, learn things that you want to get better at. And then make sure you’re building them into your business and your personal life every single day, week, year etc. And Draye I know you’re an amazing guy also in a lifelong learner and love to hear your thoughts. 

Brittany Anderson 09:53

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’s 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 that 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 and 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 ultimate advisor mastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth.

Draye Redfern 11:52

You know, this is a topic that I we’ve talked a little bit about previously. But it’s a topic that I I think I almost have to preface my take on this from being a young kid. Like when I was a young kids, the story I’ve told before school was about 20 miles away. And my dad who has run a very, very successful business, we would listen to tapes back and like the cassette tapes back in those days of Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and all the Nightingale Conant programs. And I couldn’t stand it at the time. But looking back on it, you know, nearly 30 years later from those points, it made a huge impact. And that really set the foundation and groundwork for me to pursue lifelong learning. And for me, we’re all busy, we’re all doing a lot of different things, we got a lot of different, you know irons in the fire, a lot of different things that are going on, I don’t have a whole lot of extra time. But there’s a concept that Tony Robbins calls net time, no extra time of you know, I recognize the importance of what it is to continue learning and be on the cutting edge because you may get you know, one fraction of idea from one place and another fraction of idea from another place. And if you aggregate or amalgamate those ideas together, it could be absolutely phenomenal what it could do for you and your business. So for me, my next time, I’m spending a lot of time riding my bike and running, I’m listening to audiobooks as much as it would be great to listen to music to hype me up to keep going and push through that pain or whatever it is onboarding more information and like using that as a way to double up per se. At the same time I listen to things in the car constantly. I am now that dad who plays the Tony Robbins and all of those sorts of things in the car, and our 12 year old can’t stand it. I don’t care though I really don’t because I know what the long term benefits are of it. And so using these to, you know, the advantage of finding the time no matter what the general idea for us inside of the business is I want to spend more on information every year than I did the previous year, not just to spend money wastefully but to continually upgrade my circle or the environment or the mastermind groups or whatever it is to put myself in an even more effective or even higher level group of people. And so that’s one of the philosophies that I think I you know, that I really abide a lot by, because it really makes a huge difference of being in the right room. You may have done this, like amazing work over the last 1020 30 years. But maybe if you were in the right room, you could shortcut the time it would take you to achieve your next level of results from 10 years to six months or 10 years to a year. And just being around the right people that challenge you to make you think differently. So many people especially EF A’s, immediately look to calculate the time ROI are the financial ROI of the investment that they make, instead of looking at the longer compounding effect, Brittney and I, as both spoke at an event A few weeks ago, and one of the concepts that I talked about was the 1% effect. And the 1% effect is just trying to be 1% better every single day, that’s audio books or books or setting aside time to reading and at the end of that one year, you are 37 times the person that you were previously not 37% 37 times better. And it’s just those little things that have the compound effect, like Darren Hardy talks about that really add up over time, but it’s a matter of making that a priority. So it’s not just for me, it’s also that we embody in the company that I will spend up to 10% of someone’s annual salary, to invest into them into additional content programs, learning seminars, whatever it is, because not only are they going to get the benefit of that, but I’m going to get 10x The benefit of that over the coming year. Because now as I you know, the rising tide raises all ships. So whatever the saying is, I want everyone around me to be a part of that tide that you know, that raises in order to help everyone level up, because that helps the organization hit the goals a lot, lot faster. So for me, I can directly say our allies have been north of 10x conservatively, from all of the content and Masterminds, all these sorts of things. But it’s really just one of those things of, you know, we’re all busy, you just got to set the time aside to do it. And if you are so busy, you don’t have any time at all, you got net time, you got net time, somewhere that no extra time, in the car or on the airplane now that we can start flying again, whatever it is to use that in your life. So that being said, Bernie, that’s my take on always learning, I think that there’s maybe a few things there we can unpack or circle back on. But this is something that I think all of us we embody wholeheartedly, yeah, you

Brittany Anderson 12:25

know, I couldn’t help but think about I think I’ve shared this previously, but there is a, an industry icon who many people in our industry would know. But his whole rule is when you’re in a meeting, if you’re in a team meeting, if you use the word busy, guess who gets to stand up for the rest of the meeting. And you know, I think I use it a little bit in jest. And it is funny, I mean, just making somebody stand up because they use the word busy. But really, if you think about it, we all have the same 24 hours in the day. Everybody has different things in their lives, regardless of what stage you’re in, where you’ll get these ebbs and flows of inundations. You know, Draye gives the example of having you know, a newborn and training and focusing on health and growing a business and all the things that come with all of that, you may not have a new baby at home, but you may have something else, you may have something else that’s taking up a lot of your energy and time. So I think a good alternative to the term busy is activity, you can have a lot of activity going on in your life. But like Dre said, and give the example of kind of that net time, it’s how we allocate and where we choose to put our attention. So I’ll drill into the top three takeaways here in a minute. But I think that’s really important to drive home is that if we have a consult with an advisor, this happens a lot, where you’ll have a consult with an advisor, they’re talking to us about joining our mastermind, they’re talking about our accelerator program. And typically, the first few sentences that we hear out of their mouth is oh my gosh, I’m just so busy right now. I’m so busy, I have so much going on. I think every human thinks they’re the busiest human in the world. And it doesn’t take away from anything you have going on in your life. It’s just what are your priority is, then actually, in the next part of this series, we’re going to talk deeper on that and what we say no to. So I just think that’s something that’s really important to pull out of this, along the topic of lifelong learning and focusing on where you put your attention and how you spend your time. And Brian gave some great examples to that, too. You know, you have an episode you like on Netflix? Well, you know, that could probably wait, you could probably read a couple chapters from a book in that same time period. So it’s how we choose to spend our time. So guys, before I go into the top three takeaways, anything else that you want to add? Yeah, Brittany,

Bryan Sweet 15:37

Yeah, that is so true. Brittany, I appreciate your bringing that up. Because I just had two meetings out there yesterday morning. And it was a nice, cool morning, no humidity. And the clients were all smiles we had coffee and, and sat around the rittany alluded to nice comfy cushions, we’ve got a big screen TV, above the fireplace. And the interesting thing is they relax more. And they actually express and tell you things in that environment that I normally don’t hear. And it was really amazing, just watching their faces, and the excitement when they got to sit out on the patio yesterday. And, and I told that the team after the meetings, I said, we just need to keep doing this more and more. Sometimes we don’t do enough of them. But the experience is always always great. And also, to your point, Brittany, about the dream wall, I really think it is amazingly impactful. The team dream wall, because we live and breathe, helping people live their dreams. And it all starts with our team. And if we don’t help our team, solve their dreams, then how are we going to help our clients. And then when the team gets their dreams solved, they actually become sales people for our whole process telling others of what they’ve accomplished, and how the dream architect has had a benefit for their lives, and how it could be helpful to them. So I think those two little things turn out to be such huge things for future relationships and, and building better relationships.

Brittany Anderson 17:27

I think there’s so much to be said about that. And, and you’re right, I mean, just just being out there. And that feeling of relaxation is so awesome to see with our clients. Because you know, especially during, you know, we’ve had an interesting last 1518 months in the pandemic, and people may be a little more stressed than normal. And it’s just such a neat environment to be able to host and, again, deepen those relationships. So again, it’s being in this town of 10,000. People just go into this shock and awe when we start talking about that. But really, when your focus is set on a common vision amongst your team, when you are all moving towards the same goal of really helping people and helping people realize all that’s possible for their future, you don’t really see limitations. So in the next episode, we’re actually going to talk more about that and really aligning people towards your vision. We talked about vision a lot on this podcast, but it’s because it works. It’s meaningful, and it matters. So I’m going to give really three key takeaways from this particular episode. And I think, if nothing else, if you do not listen to another single episode, in this podcast, these three things are going to be massive value adds to your business, and things that can help you create even more success. So number one, I think Bryan absolutely nailed it on the head. It’s setting timeframes and expectations with your clients ahead of time. You know, it’s amazing at how many businesses or interactions when you start doing that for your clients, you realize just how many businesses out there don’t do that. So it helps you to differentiate, it helps you to deliver in a way that allows you to wow them. So if you know that you’re very, very likely going to get something done for your client or prospect by say, you know, Wednesday in the week, if you tell them, hey, if it works for you, and if this matches your timeline is Friday, okay, they’re like, okay, yeah, sure. Great, that sounds wonderful. Friday is perfect, and you’re able to deliver on Wednesday. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, you guys just killed it. Now, again, that’s very strategic, and it’s intentional, but it’s because you want to make sure that their expectations are always met or exceeded. And we just don’t know, in this crazy world, there are things that can pop up that can throw you off your game that can cause a delay and you’d rather give yourself that cushion, then having to go back and deliver disappointing news. So setting those timeframes and expectations and letting your clients be the ones to tell you when they want it. You’re going to realize quickly that it may give you Even more flexibility in your delivery schedule. The second key takeaway from today is taking a bird’s eye view. And I think Bryan gave a great example of having kind of that secret shopper come in. But have somebody come in and actually experience your office experience your team. Look at from, again, that bird’s eye view perspective of what the field is, what’s the delivery? And what is the true experience. So do that for yourself, get that bird’s eye view, and then make the decision to tweak one or two things, one or two things that will create an enhanced experience for your client and our prospect, those little tiny minutia moves are what make a massive difference. So you know what sweet, we are known for our client experience. And we say that from every ounce of humbleness as possible, but we are known for that. And our clients have said, you know, you just don’t even know it until you experience it. Well, if we looked at that, and said, Well, we’ve mastered it, we’re the king queens of experience, we don’t need to do anything else, we would quickly fall behind. So even where we’re at with that whole experience delivery, we’re constantly looking for ways to enhance and improve it and create an even better experience for our clients and our prospects. And then finally, I think a great way to deepen a relationship is to create a relationship, ship based atmosphere, there’s nothing more else worse, and Bryan will attest to this over and over again, there’s nothing worse than walking into an advisory office and seeing piles of paper or folders or chaos or a mess. What do you think the perception is going to be? They’re going to look at that and go, Oh, my goodness, if they can’t keep their space, like open, clean and inviting? How are they going to manage my money? So you know, it’s amazing, because there are very successful advisors out there who, where we’ve done on site visits on site coaching or training, and we walk in and there’s, you know, trim falling off the wall or piles of paper everywhere, or file cabinets that are bent and wonky, and they can’t close and you’re scratching your head going, Oh my goodness. Like if I’m having this first impression, what must the client feel? So having that mindfulness of if you really want to deepen relationships, and build your business and create something that is so different from your competitors, looking at it from the perspective of how can I create a while welcoming, warm, enriched environment that’s going to allow me to actually get to know these people to deepen the relationship and make them feel welcome. So Bryan, before I close this out, is there anything else that you want to add, say, put on the on the table for anything experience related?

Bryan Sweet 22:41

I’m gonna be great, Brittany, I think you’re genius just showed through so I’m gonna turn it back to you.

Brittany Anderson 22:47

Perfect. Well, that wraps up today’s episode of your ultimate advisor podcast. We will continue on in the next session with training your people towards your vision. 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 ultimate advisor podcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.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.