The adult behaviors that one demonstrates will be exemplified by their clients in kind.

 

I’m feeling like I’ve got some additional peace of mind and the space to attract new ideas and opportunities after creating a new system. The increased number of financial advisor coaching clients using the One Page Business Plan has also increased my use of GoToMeeting. I’m finding that my day is starting by preparing for my coaching calls along with ever increasing extra time to schedule One Page Business Plan financial advisor coaching sessions using GoToMeeting. This, of course, takes more time.

In the later part of 2011 and in the beginning of 2012, I’ve been looking at ways to use delegation, systems and technology to save energy and time so that I am in a position to use my mind to attract ideas and opportunities versus doing routine but valuable tasks. We only have so much consciousness, energy and time. We’ve got to make a choice what we’re going to do with it.

So to save consciousness, energy and time I invested the best part of an hour last Friday morning with Deanne McAndrews, our Customer Service Virtual Assistant. I used Audio Acrobat to record a telephone conversation with Deanne while using GoToMeeting to visually show Deanne how to identify my next week coaching calls that are scheduled in Maximizer so that Deanne can then use LogMeIn to go into my computer and send out the GoToMeeting invitations on my behalf.

Now that I have more consciousness, energy and time, how about the formula for Deanne + Delegation + Systems + Technology + Team + Audio Acrobat + GoToMeeting + LogMeIn = just Space. Ahh.

Deanne + Delegation + Systems + Technology + Team + Audio Acrobat + GoToMeeting + LogMeIn … Cost mid 4 figures monthly.

Space … Priceless!

 

A new sales manager joins a company and advises the sales team that he wishes the sales team to fill out and submit a report on Friday afternoon.

The report has one question with the box alongside of the question.

The question is; How many sales calls did you make in the past week?

On Friday afternoon the sales manager is waiting for the reports from the members of the sales team and there are no reports.

The sales manager calls a meeting on Monday morning and asks each member of the sales team the following question: How many sales calls did you make in the past week?

The first member of the sales team starts off with the beginning a lengthy reply.

The sales manager says;

With respect, can I interrupt you?

I just want to bring you back to the question; How many sales calls did you make in the past week and can you see the little box beside the question?

The reason I gave you the little box beside the question was for you to fill in a number.

If I wanted a story I would’ve have giving you a bigger box.

The One Page Business Plan helps you to create your business plan on one page in 29 short and concise sentences without getting bogged down in a long story.

In closing, do you have a One Page Business Plan or do you have a story?

 

Which routine are you following?

Laura and I have just finished day 1 of 3 of our 2012 planning process with the following completed:

• Everything That We Have To Give Thanks For In 2011
• S.W.O.T – Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats
• 2012 One Page Business Plan
• Sales Activity Calculator

We will continue the process tomorrow with the following:

• Budget Cash Flow
• Time Block Year – Free Days, Buffer Days & Focus Days
• Job Description Review: What Is Working? What Improvements Can Be Made? What Can Be Delegated? How Can Technology Be Implemented?

The work that we did on our 2012 planning process really caused us to understand our business and inspire ourselves to a whole new level versus following into the trap of an unconscious routine.

“When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow – you are not understanding yourself.” – Bruce Lee

 

We all seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what’s next, what do we have to look forward to and out with the old and in with the new.

In doing so, we miss the opportunity to stand on a strong foundation for the new year that is brought about by having a Happy Old Year by Listing Everything That You Have To Give Thanks For In 2011.

Listing Everything That We Have To Give Thanks For In 2011 is part of our 2012 Planning Process that Laura and I will go through January 2nd – 4th and here are the bullet points of our 2012 Planning Process.

2012 Planning Process

• Everything That We Have To Give Thanks For In 2011
• S.W.O.T – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
• Job Description Review: What Is Working? What Improvements Can Be Made? What Can Be Delegated? How Can Technology Be Implemented?
• 2012 One Page Business Plan
• Budget Cash Flow
• Sales Activity Calculator
• Time Block Year – Free Days, Buffer Days & Focus Days

 

It is said that:

• Words make up 7% of communication
• Voice quality make up 38% of communication
• Physiology make up 55% of communication

I say that business planning talk is cheap because there are many that talk about what they are going to do but there are few that do.

Those that just talk with their words and voice usually don’t have their physiology into their business or their personal lives.

This may be because their business heart, passion and soul are long gone because they have gone down many visionless blind alleys in the past because they didn’t have a written plan.

They didn’t get the words and the physiology right which caused them to build an aimless business and they didn’t get the numbers right as a result.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” – Confucius Chinese philosopher

Physiology is the science of the function of living things.

Could it be that one lacks physiology and heart, passion and soul, both their business and their personal lives are lifeless and what is worse, their prospects and clients are the ones that will notice.

When one takes the time and invests their physiology into a written business plan they bring life to their plan and a new level of certainty is brought about because they have a well thought out plan and path to run on.

There is far less uncertainty brought about by second guessing in the absence of a written business plan.

The One page Business Plan is made up of five components and answers the following questions.

• Vision answers the question what are you building.
• Mission answers the question why does this business exist.
• Objectives help you to answer why does this business exist.
• Strategies help you to answer how will you build your business.
• Action plans help to answer what is the work to be done and when.

The answers to these questions will change your behaviors and changing your behaviors is what is going to make the difference in your 2012 physiology and heart, passion and soul in both your business and personal lives.

 

The days of plug and play are here but not quite … systems are more complex and so are our businesses and lives and sometimes we need to make the extra effort to make the plug and play work.

That is why we work with the One Page Business Plan and I am excited and looking for to putting our 2012 One Page Business Plan into action.

As David Byrne sang in the Talking Heads hit Love For Sale; “I grew up in a house with the television always on” that was sort of the case as our family was ahead of most North American households because we had more than one TV. In fact, I can remember having four all stacked up one on top of the other, only problem was only one of them worked and not all that well.

I can remember a December in the early 60’s when my father was tweaking the Rabbit Ears on the top of the TV to get the signal for The Wizard Of Oz and the best we could do was about 50% … so we watched The Wizard Of Oz with snow on the screen.

As time went on, the TV stations increased channels from three to twelve.

Then the cable companies came on stream with more channels and we needed a cable box / converter and somewhere along the line the TV was upgraded to color.

As time went by, cable companies have expanded with hundreds of channels, video on demand and a PVR ( personal video recorder ).

I love Apple products and being an iPhone and iPad disciple I was naturally interested in Apple TV.

But alas, my older HDTV only has one HDMI cable jack.

So I had to make the extra effort and go to Future Shop and buy a HDMI Router to allow me to plug in Apple TV.

The Apple TV has expanded our viewing universe with Apple TV, Netflix and more.

So with a little bit of extra effort, the One Page Business Plan will help you to expand the view of your business universe.

 

One example from Wikipedia of the theories Gray offers is that men complain about problems because they are asking for solutions while women complain about problems because they want their problems to be understood.

Gender aside, I’m taking the same theory and extrapolating it to suggest the following about Financial Survivors versus Financial Advisors.

Financial Survivors never stop long enough to understand their business problems because of their unmet need of security. The unmet need of security drives them to be product salespeople to medicate their need to get the next sale which is all about their need and not about adding value to their client in the form of a financial plan as an example. The unmet need of security also fuels the Financial Survivor’s inability to create a business plan or a financial plan for themselves or for anyone else. Financial Survivors just want a quick fix to make their business problems go away, problem is, this approach never works.

Financial Advisors are driven by their values and vision and because of this, they take a more long term approach to understand all the aspects of their business and they take time to write a business plan so that they are taking a more focused approach working on both short term tactics and long term strategies so that they will be in a completely different 12 months in the future. Financial Advisors take a values based approach with their clients taking the time to deeply understand their clients so that they can meet their client’s needs.

For more, please find the following comparison of Financial Survivors and Financial Advisors:

• The financial survivor lacks focus.
• The financial advisor follows a written 5-year vision and business plan.

•  The financial survivor is not making as much money as they would like.
• The financial advisor is fully satisfied with the amount of money they are making.

• The financial survivor gets themselves pumped when they are selling.
• The financial advisor feels naturally excited about their work and enjoys the selling process.

• The financial survivor feels like they are not getting enough referrals.
• The financial advisor is getting many great, qualified referrals.

• The financial survivor feels like they are working too hard, with too many unqualified or C and D clients.
• The financial advisor is getting many new high-quality clients.

• The financial survivor tries to serve anyone and everyone.
• The financial advisor has branded their business and is focused on a niche market.

• The financial survivor does too many favors and sells too many products.
• The financial advisor is focused on profitable products and services.

• The financial survivor feels completely overwhelmed, doing things they don’t like to do.
• The financial advisor does what they love to do and has a hiring system to delegate everything else.

• The financial survivor has a lot of conflict in their business relationships.
• The financial advisor manages their business relationships extremely well.

•  The financial survivor beats themselves up when things don’t go right and they have lost their enthusiasm for their business.
• The financial advisor always celebrates their successes and learns from their setbacks. They are achieving their true potential as an advisor.

Having said this, Financial Survivors are stuck:

• Stuck attacking change
• Stuck doing what worked in the past
• Stuck in the actions that you took during the bull market
• Stuck hiding from the fear of leading
• Stuck and failing to change
• Stuck and feeling drained, exhausted and frightened
• Stuck because we were taught in school to the test
• Stuck believing that we must follow authority
• Stuck ensuring compliant behavior
• Stuck doing the same thing treating everyone the same
• Stuck following archaic rules that we help to create
• Stuck blaming the agency or the manager that you believe abandoned you
• Stuck wanting independence but fearful of waking up unemployed
• Stuck pushing products versus ideas
• Stuck believing the creative are punished
• Stuck because of fear of criticism
• Stuck in fear about what someone might say
• Stuck because we are afraid that we will get into trouble
• Stuck feeling the organization watches everything we say
• Stuck believing in a BIA – Bureau of Idea Approval
• Stuck believing your mistakes will make the media
• Stuck wanting stability and the absence of responsibility
• Stuck wanting an organization to absorb the responsibility
• Stuck believing we can’t make change because that is not our job
• Stuck maintaining the status quo
• Stuck doing the most to prevent change from happening
• Stuck believing if we change we might lose our clients and jobs
• Stuck because fear was used as a motivator
• Stuck with mental programming that fights change
• Stuck feeling that nothing is safe
• Stuck in a lot of rationalization
• Stuck brainwashed into thinking that it is safe to do nothing
• Stuck doing nothing and hiding
• Stuck in a career and we plan to spend 30 years of retirement avoiding the stuff we had to do in the 40 – 50 years when we had a career
• Stuck wanting big ideas to happen in a flash
• Stuck requiring success before commitment
• Stuck giving into your fear
• Stuck settling to follow

Financial Advisors are natural Leaders:

• Leaders understand it is rare when it is obvious when to lead
• Leaders don’t have things happen to them, they do things
• Leaders crate change before change happens to them
• Leaders have extraordinary thinking and a cause worth fighting for
• Leaders commit to a vision
• Leaders create a future that does not exist
• Leaders have faith that leads to hope and positive beliefs; sun, gravity, air
• Leaders have faith that they don’t have to outrun the Bear, just better strategies
• Leaders have faith that they can do it
• Leaders have faith that it is worth doing
• Leaders have faith that failure will not destroy them
• Leaders create rules to sustain their faith
• Leaders don’t allow the practice of the rules to destroy their faith
• Leaders create rules that will not destroy their faith
• Leaders change the system to reinforce their faith
• Leaders grow versus falling in love with the system
• Leaders demonstrate by what they do versus getting stuck with a system
• Leaders understand that imagination is more important than knowledge
• Leaders understand that the barriers to leadership have fallen
• Leaders understand that one person with a persistent vision can make change
• Leaders making things happen and it makes them feel productive and happy
• Leaders are curious about change
• Leaders have an obligation to change the rules
• Leaders change the status quo
• Leaders change the spec because they have no idea what it is until it is reinvented
• Leaders make problems go away
• Leaders don’t care about how and structure
• Leaders don’t care about the norm
• Leaders don’t care about the official blessing
• Leaders don’t seek approval, they ask for forgiveness
• Leaders take responsibility and change the rules
• Leaders expect resistance
• Leaders create something that critics will criticize
• Leaders have a willingness to be not great along the journey
• Leaders turn things into what they could be
• Leaders go out and do it
• Leaders know what they can’t compromise on
• Leaders involve others
• Leaders connect others
• Leaders communicate their vision
• Leaders use passion to lead
• Leaders seek to give more than they get
• Leaders understand that charisma is created by giving
• Leaders use charisma
• Leaders ask what I can do for my clients versus what can my clients do for me
• Leaders listen and understand that clients are more focused on being
• Leaders take action – no should lists
• Leaders make themselves exclusive to their best clients
• Leaders are generous
• Leaders inform their clients that they build their business on referrals
• Leaders research what interests their clients
• Leaders have nothing in common except the decision to lead
• Leaders are lucky enough to have a job where they get to make change
• Leaders understand that the only one that says no is you
• Leaders don’t wait, waiting doesn’t pay, saying yes does

 

I’m writing this selfish blog as my first blog direct from my new iPad 2 using the onscreen keyboard and acknowledging that after a few days of on and off working with the iPad it’s going to take a little bit of iPatience and iPractice to make iPerfect.

In a few minutes I will cut and paste this blog from the iPad Notes into WordPress and I’ve no clue how that will go because I have to set WordPress up on the iPad … I suppose you will see if I am successful if this blog post arrives.

Even with the genius of Steve Jobs, I still have the old TV generation attitude that I want to push a button as soon as it comes out of the box and have it all work.

This is ludicrous given that I’ve never experienced this from my first 1980 Wang PC days that turned out to be non-IBM compatible after thousands of dollars and weeks of programming to create my own CRM system as there was no CRM software in those days.

But not so fast.

This could have been the case if Laura and I had not purchased our iPads right at the same time that Apple had done the IOS 5 upgrade which included the iCloud.

So first steps were to upgrade our iPhones and new iPads to IOS 5 and iCloud and the whole process went well considering there we’re millions of Apple customers doing the very same thing at the same time.

Happy to say that I didn’t have to pay Microsoft a fee for an operating system upgrade through from Windows 95, 98, NT, XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Getting the IOS 5 and the iCloud for free seemed a bit strange.

My experience seemed rather ironic considering there were millions of BlackBerry customers all doing something else this past week.

All in all, the iPad set up went seamlessly and happy to say that I didn’t have to summon our IT team to set the iPad and things like e-mail accounts which is always the case in a PC world. It has always been buy a computer and call our IT team to help to set up the PC, the e-mail, the data sharing and a whole lot more.

( for the record, I’ve just switched to the wireless keyboard that I bought with the iPad as the onscreen keyboard is too sensitive for my impatient clumsy fingers just at the moment )

My plan for using my iPad is a follows:

On a business note I’ll use it as a Business Organizing Tool so that everything related to creativity and planning is in one place to include things like:

• Leading Advisor’s One Page Business Plan
• Projects List
• Budget Cash Flow & Sales Activity Calculator
• Apps like Dragon Dictation, Evernote, Mind Mapping, WritePad etc.

On the Social Media side of things, the iPad fulfills a dream of having a one place tool to easily read, mash up ideas and write articles, blogs, e-newsletters and social media posts from:

• Business magazines
• Financial advisor and investment advisor publications
• Social media groups

My final thought is another reason that I am doing this is for the challenge to embrace change.

“Change before you have to.” – Jack Welch

The only thing left is to create the iTime, the time blocks to make it all real.

So in closing on the; IOS 5, iCloud, iPhone & iPad x 2, iPatience, iPractice, iPerfect, iTried, iTired, iOptimistic … how did it all go?

I couldn’t get WordPress to accept my login and password from the iPad.

So I tried to e-mail this blog to my main computer and the e-mail would not go through from the iPad.

I sent up a free @me.com e-mail that came with the iCloud that would not send e-mail so I deleted it and then my regular e-mail account worked just fine.

So I’m just about to post this blog to WordPress from my main computer.

I just received an e-mail from Liz Urichuk my Virtual Assistant, to let me know that iPad has a WordPress App so I’ll try the App another time as I am going to leave the iPerfectionism for now as I am iTired and feel good that iTried and remain iOptimistic.