It is said – “The most productive hours of any person are his/her morning hours”. My father keeps reminding me “The most successful people in the world use their morning hours wisely”. There is some magic in morning hours that can help us build our practice. Let’s look at how you can use your morning hours to build and grow your practice. I don’t want to talk about how to plan your day, make your to-do list or write down what you want to accomplish. I want to talk about engaging in different kinds of conversation before you start your work/day.
Conversations to engage in before breakfast
Capture first insight
You wake up and in the first few minutes some inspiring thought will cross your mind. This inspiring thought can bring a change in your professional life. It comes and goes in a fraction of second. It is up to you whether you capture your insight or not. Successful advisors capture their first insight; they write it down, they link action with their first insight and apply it to their practice.
Clean your head trash
Before you move out in market or before you start talking to people, it is important to clean your head trash. I am talking about cleaning those thoughts and concepts that are non-supportive. They dis-empower you. They increase your struggle. Thoughts like “I am not good enough”, ”I do not have much experience”, “My English is not good”, “I don’t have good contacts”. Destructive thoughts are trash and successful advisors do not step out of their house without cleaning their head trash. After all, maintaining high self-esteem is extremely important to create clients.
Be a people mover
This is an extremely important commitment to make each day. Choose to be a people mover. Every interaction you have with people you got to move them. Every article you post, every facebook post, every email you send, every call you make, every meeting you have, every offer that you make, every sale that you do, everything you do choose to be a people mover. Only people movers get successful in life, they dedicate their life to service and they continue to move people all the time.
Have the belly of a whale
Every day make a commitment to be a learner and not an expert. Experts fail every now and then, but learners don’t. The world’s best advisors develop a belly of whale, when it comes to learning, i.e. they have a voracious appetite for learning. They are into advisory profession so that they can meet new people, learn and grow as persons. They know that to increase their bank balance, they need to increase their knowledge, relationship and thought balance. When you interact with someone, look at what did you learn from the conversation, what was your biggest take-away.
Open gates of curiosity
If you really want to build thriving practice – then get curious. The world’s most successful advisors are bitten by the bug called curiosity, every morning the first thing they do is, they open their gates of curiosity. They look at the world, a place where they can be more, do more and acquire more. Ask yourself “How can I create wow experience for people today?”
Great advisors step into client’s world with curiosity and not with doubts and judgments. Two words you have to keep asking your potential client is “What else!” I keep asking people “Do you have a complex portfolio? Why don’t you tell me about your financial mess?” Get curious and go deeper.
Take the pain
The most successful advisors choose to take pain for the investor community. Every morning they make a commitment to give something unique to investors. Manish Chauhan, my inspiration (and inspiration of many) takes pain to educate investors every single day: the moment he finds something interesting, he will do the required research on that subject and will make the concept very simple and easy for the investor community. He has replied to thousands of comments on jagoinvestor blog all by himself, sometimes his hands go numb, but he loves taking that pain for the investor community. As an advisor, if you want to establish your practice, start to take pain. You can create useful material for your clients and people, something that really adds value to investor’s financial life.
Showcase results everyday
Most advisors get busy showcasing their knowledge and expertise out in the world. I get a lot of facebook requests “Like my page” or after one single interaction, people ask me to endorse them on LinkedIn or they write “don’t forget to watch me live on xyz Program”. Now there is nothing wrong in doing any of these things, but most of the successful advisors do not spend a single minute doing all of above. They showcase results and breakthroughs that their clients are creating out of working with them. Successful advisors master producing results and they build everything around results, because they know they will be paid for producing results and not for anything else.
Tomorrow before breakfast, don’t forget to engage in these conversations that will straight away impact your business.
The ebook we created last month is spreading like wild fire amongst advisors. Please feel free to share with those who can benefit.
The article was first
published on Jagoadvisor blog on February 11, 2013
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