2012 is The Year of Delegation, Multitasking & Technology and I am demonstrating this right here. The following How To Beat The Winter Advisor Blues article was created as a result of a recent interview that I did with an Editor of a financial advisor publication using Delegation, Multitasking & Technology.

The interview was about how to help advisors beat the winter blues and how to set personal and professional goals.

In advance of the interview, I mind mapped what I wanted to say in the interview using the SimpleMind+ App on my iPad2 and here is a picture of the mind map.

During the interview I made additional notes. After the interview I dictated my notes into Audio Acrobat and then Deanne McAndrews, our Customer Service Virtual Assistant, typeset the following. 

You can clearly see how I used Delegation and Technology but what about the Multitasking? I was looking for content for this January 2012 newsletter so I made the decision to use the work that I put into the interview and turn it into an article for the newsletter. As I say this, this could be more Repurposing than Multitasking.

Perhaps 2012 is The Year of Delegation, Multitasking, Repurposing & Technology.

Please note that these notes are as they were dictated, meaning that they are unedited. Thanks for understanding.

Here are the mistakes that advisors are making, what they should and should not do. 

Not having a business plan. Failing to plan their time is another and their business will run them and overwhelm them. Not delegating and not segmenting their clients. When this happens they give A-level service to C-level clients. Forgetting to ask for referrals and selling too many products. Under-hiring is another one. Trying to wing it and get away with just getting by with somebody that doesn't have enough experience. Let me rephrase that, doesn't have more experience than the advisor really needs. The interesting thing is when the advisor hires somebody, all of a sudden the advisor is going to be released from all of the tasks that they shouldn't be doing. It's going to work really, really well because they've got more time. Nature abhors a vacuum; so guess what, they're going to attract new business and so they're going to bring in all this new business. If they underestimated the abilities of the assistant that they hired then the assistant is going to be overwhelmed and they are going to be right back where they started.

To deal with the mistakes that advisors are making and what they should and should not do let's talk about professional and personal goals.

When we talk professional, we can talk about objective things, so business plan, time management. When we talk about the personal side then that's the subjective side, in particular when advisors talk about the winter blues. 

Here is content on both objective and subjective.

Let me talk about the subjective part first because it reminds me of the concept from Million Dollar Round Table that they call The Plateauing Out Syndrome. In a way it's akin to the winter blues. It's when you've got strong advisors and they're successful and all of a sudden they get to a point where, is this all there is. I thought it was going to feel different than this. "Feel" as in subjective.

What's happened here is they've lost their bearing in a sense, which isn't that much different than the winter blues. Winter blues is a lesser extent of The Plateauing Out Syndrome, but similar.

Step 1, on the subjective side, the advisor gets so busy and they're doing and doing and doing for others that they forget everything that they've done. In order to get out of the winter blues look at your 2011 calendar. Go back and review all of your accomplishments personally and professionally. Write them down. Why am I saying write them down? This proverb comes to mind: If you hear it you'll forget it, if you see it you'll remember it, if you do it you'll understand it, if you write it down you'll integrate it. It's like oh yeah, I remember that, that was a good experience. I accomplished this, I accomplished that. Oh wow, I forgot about that. I tell my clients that by the time you get to February in 2011 you'll be ready for 2012. 

Next point, write down how that makes you feel. You know, when I speak I say; 

"Hey, on behalf of the men in the room we're emotionally bankrupt. You know guys... ask them how're their feeling today? And the response you get is 'good, okay, and not so bad'." 

How does that make you feel about 2012? Not that excited. We want to feel certain, confident, energized and excited ... we must have the emotional vocabulary in our emotional bank account. This is subjective but it plays a big role.

Next, revisit your values and look at your accomplishments for 2011, ask how did you live your values? How did you experience your feelings? 

Next, looking at your 2011 accomplishments again and ask yourself what were the practices that you had in 2011 that caused you to be able to create your 2011 results. By revisiting these you will remember that you decided to set your alarm clock a half an hour early. Another idea is you remembered that reviewed your accomplishments from the day before and then you asked yourself what's my next step. You remembered that you looked at your accomplishments from the day before with a fresh mind, heart and body.

Next point, time blocking. What happens in particularly in the 4th quarter is business starts running you. There's this to do, this to do, this to do... you get off your time-blocking strategy. There's a debate about where time blocking comes from whether this is Dan Sullivan's or Wayne Cotton's so I want to acknowledge them both. Time blocking consists of free days which are your time off, buffer days are the days when you're working on the business not in it, and focus days are when you're working with clients on income producing activity. As you look at your free days ask, what are you doing for exercise? Is your exercise time blocked? Is your yoga time blocked? Is your time at the gym blocked? What about the time on the stationary bike? What about your hobbies? Are they blocked off? It could be going to inspirational movies. What are you doing on your free days to take care of yourself?

Finally, this is now heading into the territory about objective, imagine that it's December 31st, 2012, and you're look back at all the areas of your business and your personal life and imagine having accomplished everything that you wanted to do and ask, how does that make you feel?

Now step 2, let's take a look at the objective approach and what you need to do is create a business plan. You have to have a strong vision for 3 to 5 years out. Seth Godin talks about the notion of "The Dip" and there are going to be dips in the new economy in the new normal. You're going to have ups and you're going to have downs hence the dip so you've got to have a strong vision. This segues also into what Spencer Johnson talked about in his book 'Peaks and Valleys'. You've got to have a peak, you've got to have vision because there are going to be valleys. You're going to hit some valleys along the way and you will prevail if you've got a strong vision.

There are 5 components of a business plan: vision, mission, objectives, strategies, action plans.

Vision asks the question: What are you building?


Mission asks the question: Why does this business exist?


Objectives ask the question: What results are you going to measure and these should be within 1 year. Examples can be: What's the income that you're going to measure? What are the assets under management that you're going to measure? What are the insurance cases, first year commission that you're going to measure? How many high net worth clients do you want to have? How many referrals are you going to receive from centers of influence?


Strategies ask the question: How am I going to build this company? Strategies are 3 years, 5 years out. 



The last thing is the Action Plan: What's the work to be done? Action plans are identified by quarter. What are we going to do per quarter and this piece here is important because people get all fired up with the vision, business plan and goals and they make the mistake going after everything at once. And, then they get fragmented. Their energy is split and it's all over the place and then that's going to turn around and lead to overwhelm. Work on 3 action plans per quarter, 3 significant things that are going to make a difference in respect to the year going forward.

Objectives are short term tactics for 1 year. Strategies are 3 to 5 years out. You have to have both objectives and strategies because if you don't have the strategies then you could be in exactly the same place 1 year from now. An example of a strategy is to stop, review the business plan, ask what worked, what didn't work and what are your next actions? It's essential to do these reviews.

Objective is future and subjective is the past.