Back to Index   Bill Bachrach: It's Called a Correction for a Reason All of my business owner friends are becoming better business people. That's why it's called a correction. During times of excess we get sloppy. We didn't even realize it was a time of excess. We just thought we were finally getting all that we deserved. It's supposed to be this easy, right? Simply put, average people were getting above-average results because of the economic tail wind, not necessarily their true abilities. When the tailwind ends the results migrate back to their rightful owners. Much like lottery winners almost always wind up broke again. Where does the money go? Back into the hands of people who earn it. For example, a billionaire lives in our neighborhood. (Actually, his home in our community is his warmer-weather second home where he spends just a couple of months each year.) I met him once at a party – 4 years ago. He's very nice, seems approachable, and I always thought it would be a good idea to get together with him to learn more about his perspective about success. Perhaps I would get a few nuggets to be a better businessman. But I was too busy. Times were too good. Last week, while he was out for a walk in the neighborhood, I pulled my car over and asked if he would be amenable to a meeting. He said, "sure!" He's on my calendar for tomorrow. How much better might my business decisions have been if I had done this on one of the dozens of opportunities I squandered during the past four years? Too busy to meet with a billionaire! The question is what can you do now? How do you get strong when times are difficult and carry that strength into the next boom so the subsequent bust has less effect on you and your business? First of all, be hard on yourself about your mistakes. Hard enough to do something about them, but not so hard that you become immobilized. It is what it is. Move on. Yes, I was a bonehead for not stopping the billionaire to schedule a meeting on one of his many walks in our neighborhood during the past four years. It's history. I made my peace with my stupidity and now I've done something about it. Lesson learned. Case closed. Next. Be committed to seize the current opportunity. As I've written in previous columns, this is a great time to be a financial advisor. Everyone is conscious about their money, but few have a plan of action that's being implemented. It's up to you to step in and fill the void of leadership. Grab your calendar by the proverbial tail and make time for new client acquisition. I recommend 10 – 15 hours / week for experienced advisors and more for rookies, maybe much more. Your biggest challenge may be the tug you feel to spend all of your time "nurturing" your existing clients. Of course you should do some of this, but don't burn all of your time with your existing clients. I was visiting one of our industry's major broker / dealers this week and during lunch their CEO told me the story about his early career as an advisor. He was torn between his commitments in life. He had a young family, his career needed plenty of attention to be successful, and he had hobbies he was passionate about. His wife helped him solve his dilemma by telling him this, "Your family will take up as much time as you will give us. No matter how much you give we will want more. So, you will have to decide for yourself how to divide your time among your priorities." Sage advice. The point I took away from that story is that you will have to decide for yourself how much time you give to your existing clients and how much time you invest in new client acquisition. It's possible that no matter how much time you give to your existing clients it will not seem like enough. This is simply too good of time to go out and get new clients to not invest a consistently large amount of time every week to acquire new clients. I would hate for you to reflect on this period of time in a few months and regret having not seized the day to add new Ideal Clients. Heed the wake-up call of this business correction. Cut the fat. Improve operational efficiencies. Refine your systems and processes. Build momentum to carry into the next boom. Keep your antenna up for opportunities. And, above all, hope for the correction to be short, but your memory of it to be long. Keep moving forward, Bill Bachrach Founder & Chairman ________________________________________ Contact Gina Concotelli at the Financial Services Speakers Network at gconcotelli@fsspeakers.net to schedule Bill Bachrach for your next meeting or conference. Announcing our New Blog... Bachrach Blog: Teaching Financial Advisors to build High-Trust Client Relationships http://www.bachrachblog.com/ Anne Bachrach: 10 Principles to Eliminate Distractions & Increase Success We're all guilty of allowing the little things to distract us from what we should be doing. The fact is that in order to get where you want to be, you have to do the work required to achieve your goals so you can experience ultimate success. Take a moment and ask yourself where you truly want to be? Now tell yourself how many things you did today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday that directly contributed to the future results you want. And then tell yourself how many things you did today that did not contribute to your success. Those things probably distracted you from what you knew you should have been doing. Minimize distractions and you'll reach your goals faster - plain and simple. Your goal achievement will come from doing the highest payoff activities that have the highest probability of building your success. You must minimize distractions and focus on the tasks that have a positive effect on your success. Apply these ten principles to help you reduce and eliminate distractions. Use and honor your calendar and task list. Honoring your calendar will help you stay focus on the 'right' activities and eliminate distractions. Remember; concentrate on doing the things that have the highest probability of you achieving your goals and that build your success. Distractions offer no return and no profit. Discourage walk-in traffic. Ideally, scheduling appointments is the most effective. Establish clear boundaries when you are not to be distracted, unless it's an emergency like the building is burning down and you need to get out. Screen your calls. Establish a schedule of when you are available to accept calls. Outside of those times, you'll need to arrange a screening process to allow only the most important calls to make their way to you. Again, scheduling phone appointments is ideal and leads to working as efficiently as possible. Stay off the internet. If you have to get your fix, do it at the end of the work day or a set time during the Remove desktop clutter. Remove all items out of your immediate and frequent field of vision. Only keep those items on your desk that you are currently working on. Anything else can cause a distraction and slow you down from getting your work done. Remove computer desktop icons. Out of sight, out of mind is typically a good policy. Eliminate noises. Even alert sounds from your computer can be distracting; like the sound you hear when you receive an incoming email. Ask for what you want. Busy professionals appreciate concise, focused conversation and you can show them you respect their time by not wasting it needlessly. Learn how to wrangle in excessive conversation. Everyone appreciates productive conversation. Superficial chit-chat is just that - superficial. Work when no one else is around. You can sometimes accomplish more in 2 hours with no one else around than you can in 8 hours and a full office. It is easy to become distracted. Remind yourself that those little distractions offer little return, if any at all, for the time you've invested. Instead, stick to the productive tasks that build your success. Eliminate distractions and you have an even better chance of acting on your good intentions and achieving amazing results! ________________________________________ Anne Bachrach has 23 years of experience training and coaching. Bachrach's fresh approach to business and life offers a much-needed boost for stagnant businesses. Anne works to help business people and entrepreneurs improve their productivity, profitability, and quality of life. Through her proven systems, she inspires her clients to stay focused and take action on the highest payoff activities that lead to their ultimate professional and personal success. Mark Little: Balking the Talk (Part 2) Why most financial advisors shy away from doing their own financial plans... What value can you place on having a framework and a method of progress measurement that holds the hope of enabling you to achieve all your dreams that can be made possible by money and planning? The significance is beyond a dollar value. Ok, so last month I told you what you already know, you need to walk your talk. You recognize this all to be true, but ponder a moment what this will enable you to do. By having a comprehensive life time plan you have the basis for knowing the following. Exactly how many ideal clients you need to have to achieve your goals? What minimum fee you need to charge in order to accomplish your financial objectives? Do you currently have enough money to accomplish your goals (the answer might surprise you)? How much money do you need to set aside this year, this month, this week & today in order to live your current lifestyle, cover your business overhead and taxes, and fund all your future goals? Having those three numbers regularly updated and before you might just change your life. Where will your income come from if, ever, you leave your practice? What happens if you pass away? You also know that none of the above is possible to discern with confidence without a written comprehensive lifetime plan. And confidence is what this is all about; Confidence in your future reduces and represses the natural fear that exists without appropriately "doing the math." So make up your mind right now to increase your confidence dramatically by making a commitment to do the work necessary to initiate the highest quality financial plan that you have ever seen created. Stop right now and go to your weekly planner and block time to start the project. The wisdom of hiring another advisor Now for a challenge. What I'm about to propose will trigger fear and trepidation in some of you. Some will perceive my advice as risky, others may simply not see the wisdom of this, and that's fine. But if you have courage and are really up for a journey of discovery that offers you an opportunity to stretch and grow both personally and professionally, then pay close attention. I'm going to suggest that you find the "Best-in-class" financial advisor willing to accept a client fitting your profile and hire them to do this for you. Yes, actually pay their normal full fee, with no discounts! Contemplate what this might mean for you. You will be able to experience another professional's process, which will force you to lower your defenses and address all the tough issues. For once in your life not being a "know it all" will be great for you. It will be both a humbling and potentially empowering exercise. Obviously you will have to be highly selective and have many understandings regarding trust and competence addressed, but the experience of being in your clients' shoes will be a healthy one for you. I'm recommending you put your ego in the back seat, and open yourself to the professional growth opportunity of a lifetime. Living in alignment Do you see anything incongruous with a professional who does financial plans for clients not having one for themself? Visualize how you'll feel having your life well-aligned with the advice you preach to your clients. Never again will you have to have that passing emotion of self-disappointment and personal dissatisfaction created by being a professional who does not follow their own advice. Now let me admit something to you. Like you, I once was in this camp. For a dozen years I owned a prominent nationwide investment-planning firm and did not have a written comprehensive plan for myself of the type I insisted upon for my ideal clients. Then one day in the summer of 1999 a friend named Bill Bachrach, author of the bestselling book Values-Based Financial Planning™, challenged me on this issue. He confronted me with the incongruity of not having a written plan for myself. By his caring coaching insight I came to my own conclusion that this inconsistency was an integrity issue for me. So I got it done! I got my comprehensive written lifetime financial plan completed and have updated it at least annually in each of the last seven years. As a result, I quadrupled my firm's revenue, guided my business through a multi-million dollar sale and became a partner in the nationwide firm that acquired me. I'm living my dreams and am experiencing the values that are most important to me in life. I'm encouraging and challenging you to step-up and make one of the most significant professional decisions you'll ever make. What better decision could you make today than to make up your mind to live your life in alignment with what you advocate and then create a plan to accomplish all the important things in your life that require both money and planning to achieve? Take the advice that Bill Bachrach gave me on that summer day back in 1999... "Live your values!" ________________________________________ Mark Little is an independent financial advisor. Contact Gina Concotelli at the Financial Services Speakers Network at gconcotelli@fsspeakers.net to schedule Mark Little for your next meeting or conference. Jeff Salz: Wide Awake and on the Edge: An Adventurer Looks at the Dawn of a New Day The best opening lines I've read recently are by Scott McKain, author of the new book Collapse of Distinction. In a recent blog Scott writes: "Just this morning, I received two promotional mailings from companies vowing they are 'not participating in the recession.' I, in turn, swore I would not be doing business with such unrealistic organizations." There is a recession and it is time for conducting business unusual, taking unexpected turns toward unconventional wisdom. At the edge of a chasm longevity belongs only to those with eyes wide open who recognize the only step forward is one in some entirely new direction. In the land of lemmings the equivalent is called 'natural selection'. But there is good news. As the Dalai Lama says: Easy times are the enemy. They put us to sleep. Adversity is our friend. It wakes us up. Tibetans have told us for centuries: the meaning of life is to be awake. Good morning, 21st centurians. You up yet? Only those who understand life as an adventure are poised to turn this time of stressful disruption into outrageous success. Why? Because they are pre-equipped with an enthusiasm for change and the tools necessary to navigate uncharted waters, climb un-named mountains. While in the past the best practices of the trailblazer were required by only the few, now – with adventure intruding in everyone's life whether we like it or not – it is incumbent upon us all to expand our repertoire if we wish to thrive upon this sea of unprecedented change. Suddenly the Six Steps: The Skill-Set of the Adventurer is more relevant than ever. Leap Before You Look – Commit to action. Be brash. Make it happen. Cruise control won't get you where you need to go anymore. In this economy, if you aren't willing to fail then don't expect to succeed. Aim High – Have a huge, over-inflate, hyper – extended dream. The small time stuff has lost its charm. Feel the power of an elevated vision to lift you and everyone around you above the sea of fear and self-serving. Nothing less will get you there. Give All You've Got – make giving not getting your modus operandi. Times of perceived scarcity offer us a chance to give abundantly of ourselves. As soon we begin to give we discover a generous universe. Work Some Magic – Innovate. Then innovate some more. The one thing we know that will not work is the stuff that worked before. Ordinary times reward innovation. Outrageous times reward outrageous innovation. That's the gift. Get creative or get gone. Keep on Your Bearing – Service is the compass point that leads us through the bleakest storms. Make it a way of life. The greatest gift of the adversity are the bonds we realize with one another. Remember: our heads led us into this mess, only following our hearts will get us out. Enjoy the view – Celebrate, no matter how rigorous life's demands. There is so much beauty everywhere. What we are grateful grows; that's why they call it ... 'appreciation'. How glorious to be wide-awake! Remember: stay focused, keep energized, and cultivate a positive attitude. What a great time to be alive, to be a financial advisor, a friend, a co-creator of this freshly evolving global culture. Welcome to a world of adventure. See you at the summit! ________________________________________ Jeff Salz, Ph.D is an anthropologist, author and adventurer who speaks on Culture Change, Leadership, Innovation and the Power of Corporate Sustainability. Learn more about Jeff’s adventures and Discovery Network specials at www.wayofadventure.com or contact him directly at: jsalz@wayofadventure.com. Back to Index

The Trusted Financial Advisor (tm) ISSN 1543-432X A monthly publication dedicated to helping transform the financial services industry from salespeople to Trusted Advisors. Bachrach and Associates, Inc. baivbfp.com info@bachrachvbs.com 8380 Miramar Mall Suite 200 San Diego, CA 92121 800-347-3707 Printing Tip: For best results print this newsletter in landscape mode. (c) 2009 Bachrach & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The following are registered and trademarked and intellectual property of Bachrach & Associates, Inc.: Financial Road Map®, Success Road Map®, Values-Based Selling®, Values-Based Selling® Academy, Values-Based Selling® Academy 2, Trusted Advisor Coach®, Values-Based Financial Planning™, Being Done™, Values-Based Financial Professional™, The Values Conversation™, High-Trust Leadership™ and The Quality of Life Enhancer™. All rights reserved.