If You Want to Grow, Do This Before Anything Else

As leaders of our firms, we find ourselves constantly wearing many hats. We have to remember that, in order to be successful in business, we must dedicate and spend a certain amount of time working on the business as well as working in the business. There is a very subtle but distinct difference between the two.

Working in the business is something that advisors are both used to and typically find the most enjoyment doing. Depending on who’s sitting across from us or on the other end of a phone call, we typically find ourselves in the position of listening, formulating, and dispensing advice and action items to those that we serve, and it brings us a great deal of joy and satisfaction to be the resource in peoples’ lives that they turn to for clarity and direction.

A smaller percentage of advisors, though, also enjoy working on the business. Put another way, a large majority of advisors let this aspect of being an advisor and business owner fall by the wayside, using the common thought process of “I’ll get to it later when I have more time.” We all know the outcome of that logic and thought process.

Many advisors feel frustrated with their practices because they know there are areas in their business that they could be doing better, but they have a hard time dedicating the time and resources to implementing solutions. They know that they could be improving their team approach, their client experience, their marketing plan, their investment process or research, or the technology that they’re implementing.

I believe that before all of that “stuff” gets tackled, you must first spend time on yourself. You must first realize that in order for your organization to grow, you must first work on yourself. The first step of growth for any leader is admitting that there’s room for improvement and that, more times than not, “if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.” Addressing all of the  materialistic aspects of practice ownership will not have near as much of an impact unless the advisor first spends time and continues to dedicate a portion of their resources to improving themselves as an individual.

As the leader of your firm, what are you doing to work on yourself today and improve the “first rate version” of who you are and how you show up in other’s lives?