← The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners
The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners
389: The CEO Exercise That Shows You Exactly What Process to Improve Next *FREE DOWNLOAD*
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Okay, where do I even start with process? I hear advisors say this all the time. You know, I know I need better systems. I know I need more documented processes. I know my business would run more efficiently. But Libby, I don't even know where to begin. And honestly, I totally get that. Right? Maybe you just got back from a conference with pages of notes. Maybe you've been binge listening to podcasts or reading books, and your now to do list is no less than a mile long. And the hard part is that every idea sounds really, really important. Every system feels like one you should build next. Before long, you're so overwhelmed by all the possibilities that you don't make progress on any of them. And that's exactly why I wanted to record today's episode. I'm going to walk you through one of the exercises we did in our most recent CEO day inside of the Systems to Scale alumni community. It's a simple framework that I've developed after being in this industry for over 20 years that helps advisors quickly ident where to focus next instead of trying to fix everything all at once. By the end of this episode, you'll know how to evaluate the eight core processes inside of your practice, to see exactly where your biggest opportunities are, and to walk away with a clear plan for what deserves your attention over the next 90 days. So if you're ready to stop wondering where to start and finally create a roadmap for building a more efficient business based in process, Sarah, let's dive in. Hi there. I'm Sarah Yanock, a certified financial planner and financial advisor at Edward Jones in Rockport, Texas. I started listening to Libby's podcast first and then found her coaching program online. I have been through several coaching programs, but Libby's has been the only one worth the money. It's a blessing when business is flourishing, but in reality, I was totally floundering and didn't know how or where to start with getting my business organized. Not only does she provide enormous value by sharing her proven templates, processes, and efficiency hacks, but I loved being part of a group so I could collaborate with other advisors. And since this is professional development, I can deduct it on my taxes as a business expense. I know you and your business will be better off with Libby's group coaching. So take the next step and sign up today. Before we jump in, I want to share something exciting. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be curating a group of advisors to help them grow towards their first 1 million of revenue and beyond. It's called the Systems to Scale Group Coaching program. And here's what I know. What gets you to mid six figures stops there. So if you're at 500 to $700,000 a year of annual revenue, you probably feel this. What got you here won't get you there. And you need someone inside of your business showing you the way forward. So over the next 10 months, you'll work with me personally and each other to refine your business model, prepare for hiring, simplify your operations and build a business that grows more sustainably, more profitably and more independently of you. Details are waiting for you atthe efficient advisor.com under the group Coaching tab. But I have to warn you, spots will go fast. If you're a financial advisor who wants a practice that runs without you working 60 hours a week, who wants energy left over for the people you love, you are in the right place. I'm Libby Greiwe, host of the Efficient Advisor. I built and sold a 7 figure 100% referral only planning practice as a solo advisor, all While working just three days a week and taking off 14 full weeks a year so that I could be an awesome mom, a wife, a friend, and a travel obsessed human. On this show I share the exact systems, processes and tiny tweaks to help you scale, get organized and dramatically reduce stress and overwhelm in your business. This, this is your Efficient Practice playbook. If you're ready to stop being the bottleneck and start being the CEO, let's dive in. Look, I know you've got just a lot going on. You have all the ideas and like I said in the intro, sometimes it's really hard to figure out where exactly to start. And the advisors that I know who have built incredible businesses aren't necessarily the ones with the most ideas. They're the ones who know what to ignore. Because focus, focus is everything. Right? And today I want to walk you through one of my favorite CEO exercises that we've ever created here at the Efficient Advisor. We just started using this in our alumni CEO day at the end of Q2 and it ended up being one of people's favorite exercises. And I think because it's so simple and so visual, right. It gives you instant clarity about where you are today and what deserves your attention next. So if you've already downloaded the process assessment wheel. Amazing. Grab it now because we're going to fill it out together. If not, I'll walk you through the exercise and then you can grab the link that's available in the show notes. So I'VE got a PDF for you and that's available in the Show Notes or you can go to theofficientadvisor.com389 Anytime I offer a template or a download, it's theofficientadvisor.com the numbersoftheepisode after running my own advisory firm and having now worked with over 1000 advisors and advisory teams, is that every financial advisory business, so regardless of size, has the eight same core processes. You've heard me talk about them before. Some firms have them beautifully documented. Very few firms have them beautifully documented. Some firms are completely winging it. For most of us we're somewhere in the middle, right? But every business is doing these eight core processes. And those processes are as follows. Number one is your prospecting or your marketing process. So you need to have a documented way of however it is that you're getting clients, whether that's paid ads on social media or hosting workshops and seminars, or maybe you have a social media strategy or you're doing local events or a webinar series. Whatever your process is, it needs to be documented so that you can wash, rinse, repeat. It also needs to be documented so you can track data and understand when things that were once working are no longer working. The second process is your prospect to client process. So this is from the moment a prospect says yes to you to the point of them becoming a forever client. So for most advisors this looks something like a discovery meeting, some sort of discussion around goals and dreams, some sort of collection of data, analysis of data typically in some sort of software program, and then recommendations. Then the client says yes. And then you move on to the third process, which is your first 100 days or onboarding. And so you've heard me talk about this ad nauseam here. But the first 100 days is the process of transferring assets, taking applications, actually making the client, moving them from prospect who's doing a plan with you to a paying customer that has their investments with you, that has their insurance with you, that is doing the ongoing business or if you do a fee based planning business, they are in it for the long run. They're going to re up for next year then. Then you've got your client service model. So this is arguably one of the most important processes. But how are you going to strategically add value to clients year after year? And I'm actually going to. You're going to hear a lot of content around this here in the next month or so. We are. I've been doing this really deep dive on Client service model. So inside of the group coaching program I update the content every couple of years and now with AI and some just other cool stuff that I've been studying and learning and researching or reading, doing all of our systems to scale group coaching content client service model is one of my favorite things to talk about and again, arguably one of the most important. But you need to have a plan of how you're going to do it strategically and how you're going to add impact and value to people. It's not just about the number of meetings and the number of touches. While yes, that's important, but what is your plan to strategically add value and serve clients year over year? Then you've got your client experience process. So how do you make the experience of working with you really memorable and deep? You've got a referral process. So what happens to the referrer and to the referee? You have an investment management process. If you're managing money, how do you pick and choose portfolios? Are you using a tamp? What's your due diligence process? How do you raise capital or raise cash inside of your portfolios? When do you swap out a fund? However you manage money needs to be obviously a documented process. Then you have your employee experience. So whether you have full time employees or part time employees, whether you have 1099 or W2 doesn't matter. Maybe even if you're just using vendors in the same way that we want loyalty and tenure from our clients, we want this from our staff, we want this from our team as well. You have to have an experience that makes people want to stick around for the long haul. You have to have a strategic plan of how you're going to make working for you amazing and how you're going to develop your people both personally and professionally. So those are the eight processes and they're all represented on the process assessment wheel that I have for you. If you've ever done like the Wheel of Life exercise, or if you've seen that before, picture a pizza with five concentric circles all broken down into kind of eight slices or eight categories. So each slice is labeled with one of the eight processes. And now we're going to use this to rate our ourselves on where we currently are at with each of these processes. And I'll explain what each level means here in just a minute. But here's what we want to be really thoughtful, right? When we do this exercise, we're all going to instantly think, oh my gosh, mine all need work. Every process needs work. Yes, mine did too. Everybody's due. And that's kind of actually the point. Because one of the hard parts about process work is you cannot improve eight processes at the same time. I mean, well, you can try, but your team will not love you for it. And the chances are you will abandon most of it halfway through. Because process change, it's not just about creating something, it's about actually changing behavior, changing habits. It's about changing the way your team thinks. You have to create mechanisms to come in and spot check. It's really hard and it takes time. Which is why here at the Efficient Advisor, I just don't believe in overnight transformation. I feel like process change happens more effectively when it's done in a slow, incremental improvement kind of way. So in the systems to scale group coaching program, you'll hear me say a lot of platitudes, things like, I'd rather you focus on one process and make it amazing rather than redesign eight processes that never actually get implemented. Or you'll hear me say, just do it messy, move it up one level and come back and make it fancy later. Or, and version one is better than version none. Like all of that stuff. And one of the things I say the most is remember you're not trying to go from a 1 to a 5. The goal is to go from a 1 to a 2, then a 2 to a 3, then a 3 to a 4, and then a 4 to a 5. Because a bunch of half baked ideas don't actually change your business. The only thing that really changes your business is implementation. And so I think of process change, kind of like climbers climbing a mountain. So if you were to go climb Mount Everest, you don't just start at base camp and just be on your merry way and march all the way up to the summit. Climbers do this acclimatization thing where they go up a level, they go up a certain height and then they pause and they hang out there for a little while and they adjust, they acclimatize. And what they do is their body is adjusting to the new level, the new oxygen levels, the new altitude. They're giving themselves time to rest, recoup, come up with a plan, and then move forward. And they go through this thing over and over, right? Like in these little increments. And they don't just go from base camp to summit. And so process changes kind of the same way you want to move from this 1 to 2 and I'll explain the 1 to 2 thing here in a sec, but you want to Move up a level and implement, adjust it. Make sure you've got the templates right, make sure you've got it down pat, then add that next layer. That is the best way you're going to do it without burning out, without having a team rejecting all of your process change. Like, too much process change is actually just really freaking hard. So when I say move from a 1 to 2 or 2 to 3, let's talk about that. So grab your process wheel and let's actually just do this assessment together. So on your worksheet, you'll see that wheel with eight slices, one for each core process. So for each process, I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5. So I like to do this with highlighters. So I like to color in the piece of the pie. That goes up to the number. If you're looking at the document, so much easier. That goes up to the number. So if you are a one, you're going to color in the slice of pizza that goes up to that first concentric circle. If you would rate yourself a two, you'd fill it into the second. You want to go around and you want to be really thoughtful. The key is to be brutally honest with yourself. Each process, we're going to rate ourselves from one to five, and you have to be brutally honest, because this is not getting turned in. Nobody's grading you. Nobody's judging you. This is simply a way to help you understand where you are today. And the feedback that I got from the Q2 Alumni Community CEO Day was that this is a really great visual to measure how far we've come in a process and then also to be able to refer back to on your next CEO day so that you know what needs your next attention. And you can actually measure and track your progress. So you can kind of use this sheet as a KPI for your process growth. Right? You can say, okay, I was at a. You know, if you went through all eight, I was like at a 2, 2, 3, 4413 or whatever. And you can actually measure your progress and use it as a way to strategically think about what you're going to focus on for the next quarter. So let's go through these levels. So level one. Level one. If you are a level one, you, my friend, are winging it. Your process mostly lives in your head. Nothing is written down, and you're recreating the wheel each time. Maybe it doesn' just in your head. It lives in the head of your assistant. There are no templates. There are no standard Operating procedures, there's no checklists, you just kind of go with the flow. So if you're just kind of doing it from scratch every time you are a level one, a level two, I call the rough order. This is where you have a general process that you follow and maybe a few things are written down. So there's like a rough order of how you do onboarding, let's say, but it's not detailed enough that somebody else could sit down, look at it and replicate it on their own. And this is where a lot of advisors live. I have this knowledge bias. I know how to do this. I've been doing it long enough, I know how to do this and I have a few things written down. But again, it's not so detailed that somebody who doesn't know what they're doing can do it. Maybe this lives in your assistant's head, your head. And you've got a few things down on paper that, my friends, is a level two, a level three, I call the written outline. This is your process is written out, fully written out, but at a high level with most of the steps documented and in order. So you have a step by step process, you have some templates to support it, and you generally follow the same flow every time. So this is a little bit more mature. A lot of our processes live here in this three stage, right? We've got it down step by step. I've used it maybe to train a person or two. There's definitely some gaps. And still a person could sit down and kind of have a really good idea of what we do, but not necessarily know how to do it. So a level four is what I call the fully documented system. So this is your processes fully built out. So you've got the step by steps, but it's actually a standard operating procedure, meaning every task is you've got the task, you've got the person who is doing like whose role is it to do the task? When does the task happen? What templates, instructions, SOPs do we have attached to the task? It may even include some automation. So somebody else could sit down at your desk, follow this SOP and complete something like onboarding the same way every time. So I could sit down without knowing you saying, okay, the first thing I need to do is send the client a follow up email. This happens directly after the meeting. I'm in charge of doing that. Here is the email template. Copy and paste this. And Here are the two PDFs that we attach to this email. So it has to be very documented that's level four. That's the fully documented system. And then a level five, we call it experiential excellence. So you've got the fully documented automated process of a level four, but you've also elevated it with intentional experiential touches. So this process not only runs efficiently, but it also makes the clients feel seen, known and heard. And it's not just functional, it's actually memorable and relationship deepening. If you've listened to the show for a while, when we were talking a lot about the first 100 days course and the process around that we talked a lot about, here's how we. If you look at like a taxi versus an Uber, right? Here's how we make the experience super efficient for you as the business owner. But how also do we look at it through this lens of client experience? So a level five has looked at it through those two lenses where levels one through four are mostly just focused on the business. Level five is where we really take it to that next level and say, how do we make this super experiential for the clients? How do we actually use the process to strengthen the client relationship? The exercise is now where you just go around the wheel, score all eight processes. You're not going to overthink it. Your scores don't have to be perfect. It's so funny because I just did this as a workshop live for a group. And of course I have an advisor saying, what if I'm a 2.5? I say, stick to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But if it makes you feel better giving yourself that half credit, you do you right? At the end of the day, all I care about is that when you're finished, you can step back and look at this picture that you've created because it's a very incredible visual. Suddenly you stop saying like, oh, I need to work on my business. And suddenly you start saying, hey, here's the two processes that are creating the most friction right now. Like, here are the two that are the most subpar. And so here's where I want you to go with, with this information, right? So yeah, doing the assessment is really important, but right, what are we going to do about it? So there's a couple of different ways that you can attack this, right, on the process assessment I have for you on the second page. So the second page you've got the wheel on the first page and then on the second page I've got some reflection questions for you. So, well, you've got the levels, so you can see all the Levels written out. But I've got the reflection questions to ask and I want you to look at each process and ask yourself some of these questions, right? Like in this process, what feels harder, slower, more clunky? What's more frustrating than it should be? If it were easy, what would it look like? What two to three solutions would solve this problem? How does that solution impact client experience? How does that solution impact business processing? What tools, people skills, tech would I need to execute that solution? Which solution would be the easiest to implement? So there's a couple of different ways. So we want to reflect on this. And then here's what you can do. You can choose one of two options so you can gravitate towards the hey, this is the process that I am the lowest performing on. And a lot of people do this, right? They say, okay, I have a couple where I am a two. What do I need to do for the next quarter to move this first 100 days process from a 2 to a 3? The other way we can approach this is what are the most important processes? So I would argue prospect to client, first 100 days client service model. Those ones to me are the most important processes to have. Get that up to a level five as quick as possible. So if you're a two, the goal would be to move those to a three or a four. If you're a four, to move it to a five. So you can kind of do it two ways, right? You can go, what are the processes that I'm failing the most at right now? Like I'm not doing well and how do I actually get those on the board? Or what are the ones that I'm doing pretty well that I could make? Awesome. What are the ones that I use all of the time? Maybe you don't use your referral process all that often. Or maybe you're like me where you're not doing a ton of marketing because you have a lot of referrals coming in, or you're just not in a growth stage of your business right now? I would choose kind of somewhere between all three of those. What are the most important processes? What are ones that are kind of low hanging fruit that we could very easily focus on for the next 90 days and, and move the needle on and move them from a 2 to a 4. And again, the goal is not to go from a 1 to a 5 right away. Think about this in quarters and just like, how can I make it that much better this quarter? So if you're at a two and you're looking at your client experience process, and you're like, I'm a two. How do I make this a three? And then maybe the next quarter, how do I make this a four? Right? And we want to acclimatize. We want to do that acclimatization thing where you add a little bit to your process, get your team doing it, make sure the templates are working, make sure the tools are working, make sure your team understands it and that you're having adherence to it. Then go back and add more. Because I promise, if you try to jump from a 1 to a 5, it is a recipe for failure. So I say this inside of the system scale group all the time, right? That the goal isn't to build the perfect process over the next quarter. Your goal is to become slightly better every quarter. Imagine if you picked two processes every 90 days to focus on. That is eight meaningful improvements every single year. Now imagine just doing that for five years. You wouldn't even recognize your business. And not because you had, like, one brilliant idea that you implemented, but because you consistently made the small improvements over time. So here's your homework. Complete the process assessment wheel. Be super honest with yourself. Pick one or two priorities for the next 90 days. Then put this worksheet somewhere where you will see it during your next CEO day. Because the great business, it's not built on chasing shiny objects. It's built on consistently improving the right process at the right time. That's what CEOs do. And if today's exercise gave you clarity, but you're still sitting there thinking like, okay, now how do I actually build these processes? That is exactly what we do inside of systems to scale. Over the course of 10 months together, I walk you through several of these eight core processes one by one. We don't try to fix everything overnight. We try to take that same philosophy that we talked about today. Slow, intentional, incremental improvement. But I'm giving you all of the frameworks, the templates, the SOPs, the workflows, the how to think through what you want your process to look and feel like, and coaching to actually make it happen. My goal is to fast track you from moving from that two to a four. Right? We want to compress time. We want to buy back our time. Because knowing what to work on is one thing, but actually doing it, actually building it, is another. So if you would like that help to fast track that journey, I would love to have you inside of our next cohort. You can find all of the details in the show notes and over atthe efficient advisor.com under group coaching. I hope you guys found this episode helpful. Don't forget to download your process assessment@theofficientadvisor.com 389 and you can also find it in the show notes. Thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week. I'm Ryder Taft, Advisor and Majority Owner of New Perspectives Incorporated in Jackson, Mississippi. I just finished the Efficient Advisor Systems to Scale Group Coaching program and I cannot recommend it enough. Before joining the group, I couldn't delegate, I have poor follow up and I was just overwhelmed with a mess of tasks on my to do list every single day. While I haven't completely transformed the business, I'm constantly improving our processes and I can see the path ahead. For instance, I was recently able to systematize a high value tax review, document the process and have my associates handle most of it, allowing me to step in and and add more value with less stress. The cohort in the group coaching is awesome too. We learn from each other and we encourage each other outside of scheduled meetings. The whole program is tremendous value and if you can join with an accountability partner because you're going to have a lot of professional growth in a short amount of time. Sam.