Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

Speaker 1: This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week, we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets, and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by your host, Brian Sweets, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern, who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So, what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson: Hello and welcome back. This is Brittany Anderson with your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. I've got with me the fabulous Brian Sweet and the fabulous Draye Redfern. We are going to go and continue into this 12 week series on what creates or what constitutes a top advisor. Today, we are on episode number seven, which is that top advisors, they are open-minded, and they never let their thinking become insular.

 Now if you have been with us for a while now, you know that we talk quite a bit on the topic of masterminds, of sort of surrounding yourself with people that are big thinkers that are going to help push you outside of your box, that are going to give you different perspective and really help you not only grow your practice, but grow as an individual as well. I thought that today, an excellent one to kick us off, because he is the king of being involved in masterminds, of really expanding his thinking, and of never thinking small. Brian, I would love for you just to touch on how you can't say enough about what joining masterminds has really done for you and the opportunities that it's open. I would love for you to share kind of your journey on what it means to you to not let your thinking become insular because you are the king of big thinking.

Brian Sweet: Well, this is such a interesting topic and we have alluded to it a number of times in the past during these podcasts. But I do think it's actually, if not the biggest thing, one of the biggest things that leads to success, because you're only as good as one, the people that you hang around, and two, the thoughts that you allow that enter your mind. And if you're never out exploring and being exposed to new and interesting thoughts, concepts, and ideas, everything that you do is going to stay status quo and very stale. You'll probably continue to hear us talk about this many more times, but I would just tell you it's such a key to success, and the more I get involved in masterminds or outside groups, study groups, things where the people that are part of it are excelling, exceeding, and at a new level that I would like to learn or be at that level in that particular aspect, nothing but good things can can happen because of that.

 And the more you surround yourself with that type of person, and as Draye alluded to, kind of be the dumbest guy in the group, if you will. It's just amazing what your eyes see, and your ears hear, and then what that creates in your brain that actually allows things to be completed. And if me personally were to say what's the biggest reason for your success? Personally, I would have to say just belonging to all of those groups. You know, we're kind of talking to the choir with Draye and Brittany, we're all big believers in that. But Draye was just telling me a story before we got on the podcast today that he just took that maybe to a another level, and him and his wife drove to an interesting program, so maybe I'll jump in and let you kind of tell a little bit of that story and some other thoughts, Draye.

Draye Redfern: Thanks, Brian. You know, it's one of these things where I think that the idea of a mastermind and outside groups to impact your intelligence, your idea processing, and really make you think bigger should be an absolute prerequisite for almost any business owner. But there's a psychologist who did this study on the difference between an entrepreneur versus a wantrepreneur. The biggest difference was that wantrepreneurs had never made a point of no return, whereas many entrepreneurs made some investments, whether that was starting the creation of an entity or maybe their point of no return was when they finally hired their first employee. That was the point of no return. I think that for my point of no return was joining a mastermind. This was five or six years, probably six or eight years ago.

 I joined a local mastermind here in Texas and I was just around so many bigger thinkers than anyone else that I'd ever surrounded myself with. That was just a complete game changing moment for me. That was my point of no return that really showed that I needed to be in business and doing these sorts of things. But I would take that step further, because that was one perspective. But as time goes on, you realize what else is out there and you get to join other mastermind groups or other collectives or whatever you may want to call them that make you think bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And so as a result, my perspective of business and my perspective, my thought of what's possible in business has grown dramatically over the last 10 years.

 So much so that just this last weekend, my wife and I, we have a two month old baby. We drove the four hours from Dallas to Austin to drop our baby off with my folks house and then drove another three hours or so to Houston to go attend basically a seminar or a conference on this sort of thing, on thinking bigger and being more mindful of the decisions that you're making in your business. Was that easy? No, and there was a thousand excuses as to why we shouldn't do it, because it was the time in the car, and then it's a newborn, and then we're being away from her for two nights. Nd we could've made every excuse in the book, but these are things that we highly, highly value because of the back end or the long-tail effects that it has on us, both personally in our marriage, and relationship, and our businesses, all of these sorts of things.

 Sometimes we get very linear thinking. Being in the financial advisor world, it's I need to know that this particular one thing is going to ROI in the next 90 days. But it doesn't always happen that way, you know, when you sort of surround yourself with bigger thinkers and you're no longer insular. It has a long-tail effect. And so sometimes ideas or concepts that I learned in a mastermind or event two, or three, or four years ago, I wasn't in a point in my life yet where that actually made sense or fully computed. However, when I found myself in new situations with a growing family and a newborn, all of a sudden, I recall back to some of those notes and it completely allowed me to shortcut the time so much faster.

 But I take that a step further is that I am more than happy to pay for any continuing education for any events, or seminars, or travel, or anything for anyone on my team. Because I know how important it is for myself not to only be in the own idea vein that I find myself in, that there might be other facets of the business that they are just absolutely enamored with and they love. But because if I'm the only one driving the ship, that we're only going to attend these events or these masterminds, then I'm doing my team a disservice by not actually allowing them to improve their own education that will obviously impact the business.

 That's another thing that I would say that if you have a team around you, you're investing them through training and your current methods, and your current systems, and your current processes, which you know is absolutely wonderful and I think you need to do those things, but I'd also take that next step and say your second in command, or your third in command, or maybe even someone else down the line needs to be in a position where they can also onboard new information. Because you could be open minded, but if you constantly are only limited to one vein or one stream of thinking, you're not probably maximizing your organization as good as you can.

 There's a quote, there's plenty of other things we could probably unpack there, Brittany, but there's a quote that I think is just so impactful. Maybe I've said it on the podcast before or not, but there's a writer and philosopher named Elaine Bhutan. It was a French guy and he has the quote that says, "Anyone who isn't embarrassed by who they were last year probably isn't learning enough." That is just so impactful, because I think that is the mentality that Brittany has, and Brian had, that I have, and that I want everyone on my team to have, because I want them to be embarrassed of who they were last year because they've grown so much and they're a completely different person.

 That being said, Brittany, I think that that's at least my take on not becoming insular.

Brittany Anderson: You know, you brought up some really good stuff that I'm going to circle back to you in a second here. The whole concept of teams, we're going to get on that in a minute. But I brought up the definition of insular thinking. Okay? Insular in itself by definition is being ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience.

 Think about this for a minute. If you are not, and take yourself out of this equation, if you're not exposing your team to the big thinking, to opportunities to grow, like Draye so eloquently stated, if you're not exposing them, they really don't have a choice but to be ignorant because they're in their own position. Right? They're in their own world. If you as their leader, if you as their boss per se, even though I hate that word, if you as their leader are exposing them to amazing opportunities that is going to help shift the way that they think, it's going to open their mind to a whole different thought process. That's how you overcome the trap of insular thinking, not just for yourself, but for your company as a whole.

 I think it's so important because we hear and dealing with, not just financial advisors, but other business owners overall that we work with in our coaching, you'll see that they oftentimes say, "Well, I just want my team members to think outside the box. To think big." And it's like, "Okay, I agree with you. That's a really good goal. So what are you doing to help put the right tools in their toolbox?" "Well, I don't know. I mean, I have the checklist and everything that they can go off of and I've internal processes." It's like, "Well, what the heck?" If you're not exposing them to these other opportunities, and it doesn't necessarily have to, depending upon where you're at in your business, we always recommend allocating funds intentionally to team growth, but that can be through a local individuals too, right?

 So maybe you have a second in command that goes with you to some of these conferences, or masterminds, or trainings, or seminars, whatever you want to call them. Maybe you have a second in command that you physically have join you, then your training plan in that and your opportunity to expand the rest of your team's mindset, is to make sure that second in command comes back and implements those key things with your team, right? So the message doesn't get lost, because as we know, as a financial advisor, especially as a very driven one. If you're listening to this podcast, I would guess that you embrace and embody the characteristics of a top advisor. But what happens is you go to a conference, you go to a mastermind, you go to a meeting, and you're like, "This is amazing. There are so many amazing ideas. There's all this good stuff." You get back to your office and you're onto shiny object number 421 for the day. Right? And some of that gets lost.

 So, part of your plan in creating an open minded culture is just to make sure that the stuff is getting communicated, is to make sure that it's getting brought to your whole entire team. It's not stopping with you and it's not stopping with your second in command. That is so, so important.

 But on the back end of this, I want to talk about a little bit of a danger with it. I know Brian will attest to this and he's going to get a chuckle out of it. As part of my own journey in my career, in working with Brian, he has absolutely been the one to bring some of these mastermind opportunities to me. Through that, through my own experience, I uncovered that I love coaching. I love being in front of people. I love speaking.

 All of this stuff came about because of being part of a mastermind, because of continuing my education. Because of it, continuing on that path of, "Hey, I want to be around big thinkers." Like Draye said, it's like the point of no return. Once you're exposed to it, you just can't ever go back. Part of this is that if you're exposing or as you're exposing your team to thinking big, to ideas on how to run a business, on how it's so much more than just their individual position in your firm, be prepared for them to skyrocket, right? Be prepared for them to take off and really fine what their true calling is. That's actually an amazing thing for you to do and to be able to be a testament to in helping people live the life that they are so excited about they can't wait to jump out of bed in the morning.

 It's like the second effect of having an open-minded culture, it's going to encourage your team to do the same and that is powerful. That is an amazing thing that you can offer that money cannot pay for. Right? There's no price you can put on that for helping people truly find their calling in life, and that will happen when you expose people to big thinkers.

 That in a nutshell, Brian Draye, is there anything that either of you would like to add before we kind of round out today's episode?

Brian Sweet: Only thing that I could think of, Brittany, is make it a part of your journey of each of your staff members each year to purposely help them take it to the next level and learn something new. As I heard you continuing to describe your journey and just other team members, they don't necessarily know what to do, and where to go, and the classes to take. But I can tell you, no matter what they are, when they come back, it's always so enlightening, and they're so glad that they got it done, and they learn so much. It does cause them to think differently.

 We've actually had other team members that learned things about themselves that that's my unique ability or that's what I love to do more, and we've changed job responsibilities because of that. Because some people have duties in their jobs that they necessarily don't like and things that they love, and the more you can get them to always be doing things that they love, it makes coming to work a pleasure each day. So, push each of your teammates along a little bit every year and you will be amazed at the growth that you'll see going forward.

Brittany Anderson: I think that is so relevant and so, so true. To round out today's top takeaways, the number one, and again, we've talked about this before, it's not a different story, but it is so important and we believe in it so much. The number one takeaway is figure out how you can surround yourself with big thinkers. Make that choice. Take that first step to involve yourself, whether it's a mastermind, it's a seminar, it's a coaching program, whatever it is, surround yourself a big thinkers.

 The second takeaway is get your team on that same path, right? Brian mentioned having it be part of your team members journey to really help them also surround themselves with those big thinkers.

 And three, to kind of tie it all together, is just make it part of your culture. That's what you do as a business. That's who you are. Right? Now, that's not going to just attract top talent, that's going to attract really, really great clients too who believe in what you do.

 That wraps up episode seven of our 12 week series on characteristics of top advisors. We will see you back here next week on the Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

 Hey, Brittany here. We hope you got a lot of value out of today's episode. To access the key takeaways, the show notes, and any deliverables, go to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. While you're there, check out the ultimate advisor mastermind if you want to learn ways to maximize your income, your impact, and your legacy through an automated practice, a self-managing team, and a killer culture, that clients can't stay away from. We look forward to seeing you back here in next week's episode.