The 3 Reasons You’re Not Growing as a Financial Advisor (And What To Do About It)

Slow or stale growth boils down to the same three reasons – lack of direction, lack of time or emotional blocks.

Over the years, I’ve worked with hundreds of salespeople, financial advisors and business owners, and have seen this play out over and over again. Everyone wants to grow, stresses about growth, talks and invests resources in it, but very few people and businesses make significant progress. Progress may come, but it’s often hard and strenuous, leaving you and your team burnt out and wondering, was it worth all that effort?   

As a financial advisor, you and your team wear many hats: investment expert, planner, relationship and project manager, therapist, coach, marketer and salesperson.

Growth is hard. You have many competing interests. Regardless, you still want to grow. So what can you do about it?

Let’s examine each obstacle, from least to most threatening to progress, and how to overcome them.

1. Lack of direction

There is a lot of truth in the quote, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” From my experience, 80% of growth success comes from the belief that it’s possible, but having a plan is still essential. A plan helps you know what to do and gives you the hard evidence that your goals are attainable.

Imagine a world where you wake up every day and know exactly what you need to do to make progress towards your goals. This level of clarity and focus is what differentiates the somewhat successful from the very successful.

Think about the 23-time Olympic gold medalist, Michael Phelps. When he’s competing, do you think he ever wakes up and wonders, what do I need to do today? He knows exactly what to do, not do, eat, drink, wear, think, etc.

That level of regime may not be realistic for most of us. There are many things that impact your day-to-day that are outside of your control. However, preparation with a plan goes a long way to staying focused on the most essential things.

A growth plan always starts with three essential components: goals, ideal clients and resources. These are the foundational inputs that inform your growth strategy and tactics.

•  Goals are often quantitative such as, AUM or revenue. They should also account for qualitative metrics such as work-life balance or the client experience you want to maintain. Download a Momentum Goal Worksheet to get started.

•  Ideal clients are those relationships, which will help you grow in a sustainable way. Quality over quantity. Your ideal clients’ values and needs should drive what and how you go to market and deliver your services.

•  Resources are your strengths, systems and skills. Start with what you have.

For example, if your goal is to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, who would you want to be hiking with you as part of your team? As a guide? What will you pack in your bag? How will you prepare your body and mind? Which path will you take? The answer to these questions varies by individual because we inherently bring different resources to the journey.  

Regardless of your goal, a customized plan increases your chances of success.

2. Lack of time

If you’re too busy to grow or take necessary action to grow, you won’t grow. Time is a resource. When managed and protected it can ignite progress, momentum and results. When left unmanaged, lack of time leads to stress, unproductivity, frustration and burnout.

What are you doing to manage and stay in control of your time?

One of the greatest threats in my clients’ success is busyness and their ability to execute on their plan. (I don’t expect them to do everything, but implementing even 10% of a plan can have a big impact).

I worked at an RIA firm for seven years and understand the day-to-day demands from clients. The market and your team can feel overwhelming and uncontrollable.

Stop saying and believing you are busy. Whatever is coming your way likely has been invited by you. You’re in control of how you’re experiencing your day-to-day.

If you want to grow, create space for it by literally carving out the time and energy for you and your team. When you’re heads down, struggling to keep up, you miss the opportunities that may be right in front of you.

There is no black and white answer here. How you manage your time and create space largely depends on your resources and personality.

If you’re a morning person, carve out 30-minutes in the morning for development. If you like lists, always include a development to-do and don’t stop until it’s done. If you’re a writer, write. If you hate writing, create videos that speak to your ideal clients’ needs.  

A helpful approach to find time and take action is to break a large goal into small, bite-sized tasks that are reasonable to complete daily or weekly. Use the Momentum Goal Worksheet to get started.

3. Emotional blocks

The most common (and hardest to quantify) reason why you aren’t growing is an emotional block – fear, feeling of unworthiness, lack of confidence, an unproductive relationship with wealth and success, the list goes on.

Often, we use excuses like business and lack of know-how to validate our emotional blocks.

If you believe that growth requires a lot of effort (and you’re already stretched thin) or leads to more problems, why would you let yourself grow?

Our subconscious job is to protect us from danger. If growth looks like danger, guess what, you will avoid and protect against it.

Simply becoming aware of an emotional block can be very helpful. Once something is in your conscious you can at least start to do something about it. A coach, peers and mentors can also help you work through the areas where you keep getting stuck.

Promoting and maintaining a positive mindset and mental state is always helpful when you’re working to grow. Here are some ways to get started:

•  Get enough sleep. There are many studies highlighting the importance and benefits of getting between seven and nine hours of sleep. Sleep reduces stress and improves memory and alertness.  

•  Curate your inputs. One way to reduce your negative intakes is to be careful of where and how you get your news. A study from the Harvard Business Review showed that people who consumed negative news in the morning were 27% more likely to feel unhappy six to eight hours after than those who consumed positive content. If you have CNBC on, turn the volume off. Use news aggregator such as Feedly or Seeking Alpha to build your own, trusted news channel. Work to balance the negative with positive inputs. Identify positive inputs such as time with family and friends, certain clients, aspects of the work you love. Make sure you build these inputs into your day.

•  Cultivate an optimistic mindset. We are all wired differently. Some of us are more optimistic than others. However, your mindset is malleable. When it comes to sales, positive psychologist, Michelle Gielan, found that there is a link between optimism and success, including 37% higher sales and 23% lower stress. Take Michelle’s optimism/success correlation test to see where you stand.

•  Give yourself credit for all you accomplish. The concept of “The Gap and The Gain” comes from Strategic Coach’s Dan Sullivan. The idea being, no matter how much we accomplish it’s never enough. Many of us live in what Sullivan calls “The Gap,” a state of scarcity. Alternatively, you can live in “The Gain,” a state of abundance. To get to “The Gain,” it’s important to acknowledge your and your team’s accomplishments. This can be done as part of a weekly team meeting, quarterly business review or through a daily gratitude practice. Monthly, I write a list of everything I’ve accomplished and received. It’s inspiring to look back and see how far you’ve come.

If you aren’t growing at the level you want consider why. Do you have a plan, clear goals, strategy, and tactics? Are you prioritizing your time and resources to act on your plan? Finally, and most common, do you believe success is possible? What underlying fears and doubts are holding you back? Are there certain patterns that keep you from achieving growth and success?

There are no right or wrong answers. No matter what you discover, there are ways to overcome these common obstacles if you are willing to act.