You Are Only Cheating Yourself [Episode 264]

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have gone on the wrong side of this. You can cut out steps that don't seem important, but are, in fact, critically important, and this is absolutely essential when it comes to client profitability, when it comes to surge meetings, when it comes to the prospect process, when it comes to your own financials. We'll share a story later this episode about an advisor who was off on his numbers by just just $400,000 just so it's not really

a big, a big deal, so, but these steps are critical. They can be cut out. And there's ones that have to be in there

outcome. Effective is doing the right things efficiently. So to be effective, you must be efficient, but you must be focused on doing the right things, and sometimes that means adding steps to a process that you don't think should be there. But there are key things that must get done, since our team grows, right? And that's one thing. It just took me a long time to realize that, you know, I need a different process for Micah versus for the team, because we think differently.

And when I have my operations persons in here, and they're sitting there building out processes, they have so many more steps than I think are necessary in the process. However, when we go through them, each one is the decision point they want to be able to track and make sure things are done the first time. And when I finally went into that and had them kind of build up, these processes build a lot of steps, error rate went down, things got processed so much more

effectively. We could track things so much easier, right? So it's again, what are we solving for? I'm a big fan of cutting out steps, but be careful you're not cutting out too many or putting up the right steps. Yes, you got to be really careful that even when

probably going to cut out all the steps. If the process came process, now I can go and look at it and say, Okay, what's working? What's not working for me? Because now I'm gonna be different. And so many people jump to that second step before they do the first one. Jarvis, instead of getting 100% to make from an advisor that I know and respect who has a level of it work, they're like, Oh, I'm different. I'm different. I'm gonna say it different. I'm gonna set it up differently. I'm

gonna process this different. Like, hey, this thing doesn't work unless only one piece of Alaska doesn't work for everyone else. No, you did the process wrong, right? Really little details matter. A multi million dollar book, right? This is 212

and says, I'm gonna say, Great. Do you have one clients? You're little bit less time outside of the office. that every single step, from how they hold their pen to the like trauma resurfacing, because you and I have a long history of gonna transfer over to them. So we talked about our regular green report, and, you know, he made the revenue report, regular green book, complexity inside of it, which was fantastic. And then we together, and I was like, you have to hide these

things in order to choose you're gonna go to the intruder. He's like, no, no, I'll go ahead and do this myself. And he went through, looked at each individual name, and out of the two and eight weeks, down to 70, by the way, out of 2020 he was script on the call, everything is intentional. Example, Micah, able to afford 20 to go to the junior that he's hiring. I was like, why are you hiring a junior? You're 20 clients. This makes zero sense whatsoever. That's like, what? Four days of

appointments? I was like, You're not solving for anything, right here. And he got really frustrated at me. I was like, you have to hide the names. Go do these. Micah, you don't understand. Okay, anytime you tell us we don't understand, right? You're emotional point of view, because we have been in I was just calling for its advisor, came up to me says, the same positions that you have been in, right? You are not really looking at this logically. You were saying

like, Oh, I gotta do that better on your point is spot on. I'm you're unique in your own area that no one could possibly have done the same thing you've done before. That's just a little silly, because in the same shoes that which process is that you have to do things a certain way.

clients, you're not looking at it as a business. You're looking at as Bob and Sue, or my third client, I remember they paid my mortgage, right? Larry and David. I remember when their talk about centers of influence a lot, so I'm started calling adult son died, and we cried together over there, over the cancer, whatever it is, and that has a place like, we're not talking about just being cold hearted. If we are running a

business - We need to run a business. And that regular green gonna duplicate someone's system, I need to duplicate report that client profitably. Profitability analysis only works. Also take names off of it. Just it will not work either way.

want to look at the names, the names. The only time is if you're doing what we like to call a pedo report, if you're looking for clients that are difficult, you're looking at your team. Look at it without the numbers, and you're saying, hey, any names on this where you see their name, you cringe. bring in other people to back you up, and he wants to spend That's the only time we look at it. Otherwise, it's numbers, and we're looking again if you're mid career. All right, I need to

move up market. My expertise, my skills, are more than they were it's not. The reason I call an offer to pay them is because before. My time is more. All right, there's clients are not named me what I want, they need to be transitioned to an advisor who will do a job for them. And this, again, comes down to more time with his wife and his kids, etc. Great things. You got

working for me. Then I have the liberty to fine tune it, because whoever you refer to, like your C client, which you should never have tiers, but your C level client is someone else's A level client. They're going to give them better service than you are.

works. He's cheated one little step, not hiding the names when by line you couldn't get it done. What's another example? When you don't follow the steps on your numbers and understand bringing in someone who can help them and service them when your finances again. Again, Jarvis we are working with an advisor. When we tell these stories you're gonna think they but you think, you might think, well, I'm going to shortcut this are about you because they are because we're the same, right?

These are not unique things. These apply to all of us, kind of across the board. And by the way, when I'm at my mastermind I what may seem totally unimportant might in fact be the really, well, I don't like it at the time, but at the end, I like you're not available, right? That's adding more values than it when they called me out on stop our own numbers, tell ourselves, our own lies, etc, which they want to mastermind. So we wondered, by just crushing it, and we asked him what his

process. Lunch is a better thing than meeting their office. I gross was. Gross. He kept telling us what is gross. So it's like, no, that's not your gross. You're not a gross means like making short, let's go with that. But they're going to get the total debit from the client account. But that's not the way he was. Counting it down to the 400 and he wasn't even looking

were the one. That's just the platform. You were the BD? Whatever that is, you have to say, are they delivering? And I've met with tons of advisors at BDS, where they like their BD the BDS generate tons of value for them, and they're fine paying it, and they're making a good, educated and informed decision. Rock on. There's nothing wrong with that. But don't lie to yourself about these numbers. fairness, Micah, that's not an easy step to do. There is not a

clean report that shows that. So it does take some legwork. We practice, because once you stop turning one rock, you stop turning over two rocks, three rocks, four rocks, suddenly you start telling yourself all these lies. And again, how do I know this? Because I tell myself these lies sometimes, and I need someone to call me out on that. So then we say, Well, cool, when was the last time you reviewed all the beneficiaries for your all your clients? Well, recently. Cool. What was the

date? Pull up the report, pull up the oh, it was six years ago. gotta open up client statements, we gotta look at billion files. Okay, so that's not recently, but once we stop being critical and analytical of our practice in one area, it spreads like a cancer to every area. I just never seen it any other way. Micah, I don't know if you have I've never seen any way.

practice, and now you're paying the price for it. So these are things that can really add up. You have to be vigilant watching for these things. And I gotta say, the time thing, that's something that Jarvis calls me on regularly, which is great for this, this advisor, it was a $400,000 difference. Now, once because I'll say, hey, this came out like, a couple years ago. He's like, we're like, five or 10 or five. Oh, I guess it was

that long ago, right? Those things that I just know I'm not really good at knowing the exact time, but I know what our value adds I have scheduled when they go out. We can go pull that stuff up so we have processes in there for things I am not good at to make sure they get done. Because Jarvis, I'd be 100% guilty of that I would say sure did our beneficiaries last year, he kind of saw the number, he could say, well, where's that

my standard response. But if I didn't have a report, I could prove that we can go back and look, when did beneficiaries, when did we do that work? When did we last do our buckets for it? When did we do our risk analysis right? And now we can make informed decisions.

never if it doesn't have an exact date on your calendar. You know, if we pan my camera over to my wall calendar here, if there's not an exact date, that's just never going to happen. And again, you think that step doesn't matter, I'll get around to another person. I tear it up. No, it's just not going to happen. If it's not on the calendar with extreme accountability ain't gonna happen. a tamp for this discussion. Say, discussion sake, you can then

price for that now, like they replaced them. They're super happy with that, but they took six months off from prospecting, so they're not having new clients come in and you took decide, Hey, is that temp bring me $400,000 of value to me and your foot off the gas. Now get a good excuse, but I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the same thing, but that had a price, because prospecting wasn't front and center on something you should be active in. That was easy to get derailed. Once it

got derailed, it's so hard to pick it back up. So all of these things, let's pick surge. We talk to advise all the time to say, I'm doing going to do surge, right? One, what does it mean when you're doing search? You don't have to copy our my clients? And maybe the answer is yes, I don't think so, but calendar, right? But are you being hyper intentional about your calendar? Hyper intentional about adding value to clients, right? That's that's the essence of surge, right there. And if

you're going to do it, when? And don't say you're going to do all of these things at once, because these are all big lifts. Like, when are you putting them in years to make sure your practice is up and running to where it should be?

Have you given them a reason why you want to be in the fall? Have you told them what to do if an emergency comes up? Have you given them a communications policy? No Jarvis. I just did what you did. I saw him. I wouldn't meet him till the fall. otherwise. What heads up? Then we Micah and I ran into this No, that's, that's not at all what I did, what I did, process and missing steps, yeah, yeah. And I think that's what happens

to like a jump to the end result. I talked to an advisor yesterday at a conference, and he's getting ready to launch his own RIA and I said, Cool. How are you going to find clients? And he says, Well, I think I'm just going to do paid Facebook ads. Okay, okay, you could put the money in a rare tax with an advisor one time. We said, Hey, this role that you're deduction. You could burn the money. Who know that's done that successfully? He did have one name. And I said, Cool. I know

what's going on with us? Oh, we have a big trip coming up. We're going to walk the Camino as a family. This will be great. It's 30 seconds on my life, right? I'm not going into whole detail, but I planted the seeded fall when spring came around, one of the things I added in our agenda after being Hey just as a charge me a thing. How do they keep the lights on? How does he reminder after tax season wraps up, I'm going to be headed Europe with my family for a little vacation. We're going to

walk. If anything comes up. Here's how to get a hold of me. Of course, I'm always available if there's an emergency, right? But I planted the seed with them, then I'm following up with that communication. Now, my office knows the step that if a client calls in to talk to Micah, there's a way to handle it. And then, you know, I really need to talk to Micah, just

have his private jet? Well, the client pays it. Whatever money absolutely, as a writer, Micah is on a pilgrimage with his family in Europe, but let me go ahead and get a message out to him so you call back. Oh, wait, that's right, he is out of the country. You know, this really isn't that big of a deal. Maybe I could just talk to Victoria and she can take this for me. Is this all doing a good service to the client? 100% yes, we're setting patients. And never once did I tell the client I wouldn't

be able to talk to them. It was the Hey, If this comes up in the client's paying is money they're willing to pay you. And this emergency, the team can absolutely get a hold of me, get a result. And Jervis, I had zero emergencies come up while it was gone over a month, because we had set it up in advance with our clients. Now we've not done that. Had called in, like the daily rate clients call they want to talk to Micah, and Micah out of the country for a month, and they didn't know about this.

That's now an uneasy feeling. He's out of the country, and I so in his case, the client was paying about 50 150 basis can't get a hold of how does this work, etc.

points. He was getting 100 of that. So the role of was getting had you know, maybe I'm paying you too much so you can afford these. Do these things, right? These difficult steps. Now, the more you practice the more refined, the easier they become. Like you and I cannot do these, you know, offhand, like tying our shoes, but early on, it's really easy to skip them because they're hard to do. It seem like taking the names of that's hard to do. It's, I mean, functionally, it's just high

column, but in real life, right? It's a wonderful in real life, 50 basis they were even 1/3 plus all their other stuff. Now we it's really hard. They start playing. I think I know whose count that is by the size.

outcome. Are you willing to put in the sweat equity? Are you willing to put in the work to really transform your life and your practice? And that's a big question. And I got guys that come to me and says they want to make X dollars a year, and I'll say, Man, that's fantastic. We can do that. Are you willing to work better there? And I did remember how one advisor paused,

you can't skip these steps. I know they're difficult, you just and it was really wise, uh, younger kid as well, and he was like, you know, Micah, I don't think I'm willing to work that hard. What if I just work this much? What type of practice with that music? Okay, great. Now we can have an honest conversation, right? Good job not lying to yourself. This is okay. You can have a great practice. This work level is probably going to be level success. And he's like, You know what I think right now,

where I'm with my family, that's kind of where I'm at. It's okay, great. You can have a great success like that, but don't lie can't skip them. to yourself, because what happens if you lie to yourself now, then you get into this victim mentality later, because you're not hitting this level of success. What do you mean? A, B and C? People can do it, and I'm out there doing everything that

they're doing. They must be cheating their clients. They must be doing this real negative path when the reality is you just didn't work to get there.

are willing to grind like crazy. And not everyone has that grind, and we can talk about that on another podcast, but this is where we go back to not cheating the steps. So , I want to start my own RIA. Cool. Are you willing to make 100 phone calls a week? No, no. Are you willing to make any No, okay, you probably shouldn't go this channel. You should probably find a Fidelity office or a big RIA that you can join as a gen two, where someone else is doing the great baking. You'll make a

fraction of the money. You'll never create real wealth, but at least you won't get 10 years down the road and still not have money or real wealth, then no health insurance, and be trying to figure out why you're not succeeding.

interesting. What else are you lying about? Right? But rightfully so. I said I was gonna do this thing. Are you really gonna do it? So you need that other person, whether it's a coach whatever, to hold you accountable to these typical things, or it's a pure group or mastermind, but someone that's actually going to hold you accountable and call you out and not give you a pass for in the society and the generation, they get passes for everything they can do. That's not okay, right?

You need to hold up and be able to do certain things, and it's hard work.

right. She worked with an advisor recently a BA goal to get to a billion dollars of assets, which is a phenomenal goal. We work with a lot of advisors that have that goal, and then we run in the math backwards, and we're saying, Hey, dude, listen at your current growth rate. It'll take 17 years to get there. No, no, we'll get there faster. I'm just doing the math your current growth rate because I've seen the numbers 17 years now. That's still noble. To get there at any

point in your life. That's incredible. But if you're saying you want to get there in 5 and skip steps like, hey, I want to get there in five there's these numbers I want. I want them really bad. Therefore they'll be there and I'll skip all the steps in between. So you got to have somebody that can call you out on this stuff. I think Micah get more than anything, because you just don't even see it. Right?

We'll get you there. That same mentality, right? So it's all of these things are really important to look at and not just think, Oh, I've had 20% growth over the last five years. I just keep doing growth, maybe, but probably not.

We're trying to hold things back. That's not the case. Just there's so many steps, it would be impossible to detail them all, and that's where you can't ever assume that you know all the steps. You know my own processes. I feel like, oh, you know what? There was a step in here. I didn't even realize I was doing it every time, but it's critical to the process. And I just mentioned that because it's just thinking we found an easy system. I talked to this guy is a five step

process. Is a five step process, and he makes a million dollars. He has 500 steps in between each of those steps, and I've got to just be laser focused on finding those again and again.

this. My family does it. It seems like don't you know how to use a apple calendar? I do. I have those as well. I have three of them, but I have a physical calendar. It's a critical step in my progress and my success.

right? Or have someone else write on steps and someone else follow up with you when you're doing something, are you actually doing the steps that you think you're going to do? So any of these things that we talked about, whether it's job duties, hiring team members, prospect process, client process, etc. You need to write down every have someone else evaluate doing all of these steps. Which ones are you

skipping then, okay, it's a question. Is that step really needed, or are you skipping it because you're being lazy and you're choosing not to do the hard work that would equal success?

changes. We want to make sure, because, in a way, this podcast a lot of fun. In some ways, it does a disservice. You mentioned earlier about sometimes the action items are kind of a cheater. It kind of a cheater. It kind of saves you from the hard work. But again, the podcast teases at the things that need to be done, and some advisors can take that run with it. Most need more, so we're working on some new improvements

for the podcast. If you have suggestions or things you would like to see for the podcast, send an email to lifestyle@theperfectria.com, but stay tuned this summer for some exciting changes.