Distraction-Proof® Advisor Ideas

Don’t wimp out and give yourself a backdoor when you’re setting your 2021 objectives.
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2020 has proved there are many things beyond our control, but that can’t prevent you from setting goals for 2021 and getting very specific about what you want to reach.

I constantly talk with advisors who will mention specific goals about the number of financial plans they want to write for 2021, but quickly inject, “But who knows how many decent referrals we’ll get that will actually allow us to do that?” Or they’ll talk about how many new A-clients they’d like to bring on board, but then quickly inject, “But who knows how many people will actually be comfortable talking about personal finances, given all we’ve just gone through?” They’ll quickly give themselves an emotional backdoor that feels like it takes the pressure off, should they miss their objective.

Don’t do that! You need to be resolute about the numbers and metrics that you want to reach for 2021. Don’t worry about thinking what might come along to prevent you from hitting those goals.

I had my Olympic time very, very clear for going into that Olympic final in 1988. I swam that time, and I won an Olympic medal. When I got back to New Zealand, often people asked me, “Do you think you could have gone faster if you had set an even faster goal?” While they meant that as a positive question, they lost sight of the fact that I had a specific goal. The goal time was two minutes. It wasn’t 1:59.9, it wasn’t 2:00.1. It was two minutes flat, and that’s what I trained for. That’s where the focus was. I didn’t get concerned or caught up in what might happen, and the other finalists, and how fast they had been swimming that year, or even how fast they’d gone that morning in the heats. My goal was to swim two minutes that night at that final. If I came first, fantastic. If I came eighth, so be it. Two minutes was the goal.

You need to be clear about those numbers that you want to reach for next year. One of our workshops in our Fiduciary Foundations course that we run at Ash Brokerage, for financial advisors, talks about getting specific with metrics to monitor and measure that matter most. We talk about the numbers that you need to put down and be tracking.

Many advisors hedge to begin with. Yet, when advisors actually do put these numbers down and see that they’re actually making progress toward them, they really do start to get excited.

So, in order to ensure that 2021 is going to be your most productive year yet,

1. Write down some objectives. Have these numbers, these metrics, very, very clear in front of you.
2. Don’t change what you’ve written. Sometimes they can seem a little daunting. When I put down I wanted to swim two minutes and hopefully win an Olympic medal, that’s a big statement! I was going up against the best in the world. It could have been tempting to change that goal. Resist that. Think about what it’s going to take to achieve these goals you’ve written down.
3. Get excited about your objectives. I put down I wanted to swim two minutes and win an Olympic medal, and I never let that thought go. I got excited about it. When I was exhausted in training, I still kept that picture first and foremost in my mind. You need to do that, too, as an advisor.

If you put down those numbers that you want to reach by the end of 2021, you are going to give yourself a far greater chance of actually achieving them by next year-end. Not only that, but you’ll give yourself the best chance of even surpassing them.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.