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 hosts, Bryan Sweet, 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.

 

Draye Redfern:

Hey everybody. Draye Redfern here and welcome back to another episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This week, just like last week, we're giving you some of the excerpts, the snippets from the Ultimate Advisor Summit that we held just a few weeks ago. Now you want to be sure to grab a spot in one of the next summits that we do. But while you wait for that, we highly suggest that you go grab a spot in one of our Ultimate Advisor Accelerator Programs.

 It's a great way to take everything you've learned here on the podcast to the next level so you can really implement much, much faster. So that being said, in this week's episode, we've got the incredible Brittany Anderson, who's going to help you scale your team, your culture, and your operations with more authority, with more certainty, getting more client and more employee engagement inside of your practice to really take it to the next level much, much faster. So with that being said, let me introduce the incredible Brittany Anderson.

 

Bryan Sweet:

It's extreme honor that I get to present Brittany Anderson. Brittany has just been such an amazing, I'm going to call her an amazing force at Sweet Financial. Since she's become our COO, we've just had an amazing trajectory. So, I'm gonna give her most of the credit for all the good things that happened. She's just one of those people that you tell her anything and she's on it and does it. And she's a great implementer. She's got a great mind.

 And one of the things she's exceptionally good at is how to deal with teams and creating an amazing culture and getting your team to love to do things without having to be asked and great attitudes. And with that, you're about to hear some amazing stuff today and I'm going to turn it over to Brittany.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Awesome. Well, I'm going to get my slides pulled up here in a second. While I'm doing that, when we're talking culture, we're going to talk some fun stuff today. So give me just two seconds do this. Can you guys see my screen?

 

Draye Redfern:

We got it.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Awesome. All right. So today we are talking on a simple process for leveling up your culture by leveling up your team. And I'm going to talk in a minute about exactly what that means. So give me a quick shout out in the chat if you don't mind, if at some point in your career of managing and leading people that you felt like you were or are hurting cats. So let's just get a quick like yup something like that in the chat. See them come through. Yep. I'm getting pinged. Woo. And so we've all felt that way.

 So if you felt like you're in total chaos when it comes to, how do I show up and lead my team? If I could see faces right now, I would imagine a whole lot of head nods. If I posed the question that if you didn't have to deal with the dynamic of managing people, would life maybe be a little bit easier? My assumption would be that that would be a heck yes. So today's all about culture and maybe not in the way that you think.

 We're not talking about like, "Hey, let's bring our dogs to work and have a coffee bar and take endless vacations and hug every hour on the hour." That is not the type of culture we're talking about today. We're going to talk about how you can build your culture and how by doing so, it actually allows you to scale your business to drive revenue, which I think we all want to do, and then fulfill your greatest vision on top of it. So let me get a heck yeah real quick, if everybody's on board for scaling your business, for driving revenue, and for maximizing fulfillment for you and your team members.

 All right, we've got everybody's pinging a heck yeah. Heck yeah. I love it. All right, so by the end of this presentation, you are going to know how to use a simple process to maximize the abilities on your team. Maximize those abilities so that you can have the culture of your dreams. Now, this is not the woo-woo stuff. Okay. This is not the head in the clouds, the ra-ra, whatever you want to call it. Some of you may associate, and unfortunately this is common, not just in our industry, but across all industries. Some may associate culture talk with like the flouncy ra-ra, but for today, that's not the case.

 This is not all about fluff. Does anybody remember fluff, marshmallow fluff? I feel like that was a total nostalgic thing from my childhood. So what this is, is a chance for you to free up your time and headspace. That's probably more important than anything else to focus on what matters most to you. So culture can really be broken down into six simple steps. So what the heck does simple mean? Let's start by breaking it down.

 So the first one we're going to go through is we're going to talk about how you can decide what you stand for. Then you're going to figure out how you can hire an integrator. Then we're going to work on managing your delivery. We're going to get you the right people. We're going to utilize the learning method, and we're going to create an experience. Easy, right? We can hang up now. That's all you gotta do. Those six steps, maybe not so fast. So let's dive into step one so I can add some clarity to this for you.

 So to go deep into my proprietary method is that you need to decide what the heck you stand for. So give me a quick heck yeah in the chat if you have heard the saying, if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. Let's see those chats blow up again. Oh, you guys are so good. Everybody is up and participating on this Thursday morning. I love it. So, when you think about that, I want you to segue into the thought of what is your story? What is it that you stand for? Where did you come from? Why on earth are you even in this business?

 So we talked differentiation this week. We talked in our Facebook live yesterday afternoon about having something to stand for, about deciding who your avatar is, about who you want to work with. We can't tell you that. Chris Smith, who's coming tomorrow, who is going to just kill it tomorrow morning, he's going to go deeper in the whole concept of story. But what I encourage you to do is to dig deep to where you came from. So I'm going to ask a question. I want participation in this, but I want you to drop an answer in the chat.

 If you could sum up in one single word, one word as to why you got in this business or this current role, what would you say? So I'm going to give you a minute to start dropping some words in chat. I want to see why are you in this. Fulfillment, responsibility, serve, impact, freedom, teach, control, educate, helping people, be of service, learn, no jobs. I don't even know what that means. Freedom, families, help, you guys are awesome. Those are great power words.

 And those are the things that can help lay the foundation for why you do what you do and who you serve and the type of people you want to attract in order to build an exceptional, amazing, fabulous team. So deciding what your story is is such an important aspect. Actually, I recently had a conversation with an advisor. They're a coaching client of ours, and I'm going to call him Bill for privacy reasons. So Bill, he comes to me and he's like, "Brittany, these young guys and girls, they just don't have the same purpose that I do. They're looking for lifestyle. They don't know what it's like to put in the hours, the effort, the emotional drain that I have had to experience."

 And I kind of paused for a minute and I was like, "Okay, Bill, I've got two comments for you. Number one, that is great because if everyone had your drive, if every relationship manager or wealth manager that you're trying to bring onto your team, had the same drive that you do and the same exact goal, all we'd have is a bunch of solopreneur operations. You wouldn't have any employees and nobody to hire. That would be horrible.

 So, and then number two, my second thought on this is everyone has a purpose. Every single person alive has a purpose. Some don't realize it, some people's purpose is to be a giant pain in your butt, but everyone has a purpose and everyone in their unique way has a vision of their life and what and who they want to serve. It is your job to find the right people who align with your vision." So, that's the conversation I had with Bill. And to be honest, it's not the first conversation that we've had like that with advisors or with other industries too, that we work with.

 So it's just interesting to keep that perspective that your job is to find people who can get behind that vision that you provide in a crystal clear manner, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, so that you can be a driving force that serves your clients, that serves your niche in a way that nobody else does. That's culture for you. So why do you do what you do? Who do you want to impact? I highly recommend that you take the time after today's sessions to actually answer some of these questions for yourself. So I'll bounce back in case somebody missed that. Why do you do what you do? Who do you impact? Or who do you want to impact? Whose lives are you trying to change?

 Those are the key foundational questions that you need to answer in order to start the foundation and the build or the enhancement of your current culture. Defining your values makes it really simple to find people who align with them. So if you don't know what you stand for, why you do what you do, and who you serve, and for what reason, you're missing opportunity to build a team that not only rallies behind you, but drives you towards that future vision.

 And man, when you get a solid group of people, whether it's three or 30 on your team, gosh, that is where the power lies. So the next step that I'm going to share with you today to creating that killer culture is to hire an integrator. Here's the deal. I have lost count on how many advisors who are looking to fill roles on their team that tell me they're better than anyone else at X task or X job or X position or whatever it is. So it might look something like, "Hey, but Brittany, I'm exceptional at marketing. I just know what I'm doing and it's going to take me longer to teach someone my ways."

 Or they're like, "Hey Britt, I'm actually the best COO that I've come in contact with to date. I have an eye for details and I can juggle it all." Or another one would be this is my favorite is, "It's really not that big of a deal for me to schedule my own appointments and basically be my own assistant. Because I know my calendar better than anyone else does." People please, I am begging you, I get it that high achievers, myself included, you want to be Superman or Superwoman, you want to do it all.

 It's scary to look at compressing your margins, especially if you're in that range. You haven't quite broke that seven figure production mark. Or even if you have broke that, you're looking at how you can scale. The secret to scale, it's not in making more phone calls, it's not in a getting a million webinars in place. All that stuff is part of the magic. But the real force that moves you forward is just like we've been saying all week, it's having the right who's in your back pocket. It's having people that can help you make some decisions.

 So do you want to be, this is always my question. If somebody tells me, "I can do it. I can be the founder and the CEO and the lead advisor and I can do my marketing too." It's like, "That's great. I believe you. You can, you're super smart and you're capable. But do you want to be the marketing person, the COO, or your personal assistant? Because the paycheck that comes with that is a little bit different." So when you're looking at kind of going back to mindset, really, it's deciding where is your time best spent and how can you maximize your ability?

 Because if you're doing things that really aren't in that magic arena of your superhuman power, you probably shouldn't be doing it. So you think about that. Do you want to be marketing? Do you want to be the operations? Do you want to be the personal assistant or do you want to be the lead advisor, the founder, the CEO, and the visionary that drives your company to its fullest potential that it needs to be at to match your vision of success?

 Those are the questions that you need to answer for yourself. Do you want to be a micromanager per se, who is so stuck in the business that you can't see the forest through the trees and you miss opportunities for growth and scalability? The answer, I can give it to you every time when I pose it like that is, well, no, that's not what I want. So let's get you a person. Let's get you someone to change the game and allow you to have freedom and peace of mind. Man, that's more important than anything else.

 Peace of mind to push your business to the next level instead of pulling it one by one uphill both ways in the snow. Let's not do that. So if you've never read these two books, you got to check them out. So it's Gino Wickman wrote both Traction and Rocket Fuel. I know our mastermind members have read them because we've recommended them for a while now. But basically Gino lays out exactly why you should hire this role, structure you can use. These are resources that we put in place still today at Sweet Financial that helped keep us streamlined and helped keep us running like a well oiled machine.

 And also we've had some questions from people that are like, "Well, how do I find, what characteristics do I look for in my person? How do I find an integrator or who should this person be? What should they be like?" Gino actually lays out in Rocket Fuel literally a list, a bulleted list of the traits you should look for in an integrator, in a person that can take all these beautiful things that we've talked about the last four days and bring them to life for you. It doesn't mean they're doing them all, but they're overseeing them.

 So like I said, we've had people ask over and over this week, like how to find someone that brings all this stuff to the table. We've had people ask those qualities. We've had all of those. Like, how do you focus on what you're most passionate about? All of that good stuff. So for the sake of this presentation today, I want to put this in perspective for you. So let's just say, just like you're doing right now, you go to a conference, you go to a meeting, you go to a presentation, you're feeling so jacked up. You are on cloud nine. You're energized.

 You're like, "Yes, I am taking on the world. I'm kicking butt and taking names." You're so stinking excited. You are ready to do it all and implement all the things. That's what you're focused on. Then you get back to your office, back to your normal stuff, and the world literally sucks the joy out of you. And you proceed to have all those great, amazing life changing ideas for your business set to the wayside because you've got fires to put out. Without an integrator, your expectation and the actual results, they tend to typically oppose each other.

 However, with the right integrator, the opposite proves to be true time and time again. Now, the issue that sometimes comes up with this or in relation with this or that comes to fruition in my next point in using the simple method and creating a tiller culture and that would be in managing your delivery. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about the management of delivery. So drop a quick whoops in the chat if your delivery tends to be a little bit rough around the edges.

 Would I be wrong in saying that you mean well, but it maybe doesn't always come out that way? So let's see how many whoops whoopsies we get. We got, whoa, we got something. Oh, some terrible. Some whoopsies some yup, mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, that's all good stuff. Oh, you had a quick question. Title of those books. Traction and rocket fuel. Let's see, what else have we got here? Never, somebody's perfect. I like that. Lead, not manage, so good. You guys are awesome.

 So here's the deal. As entrepreneurs, as a business owner, as a visionary, as the primary advisor, you often have a really clear picture up here of what you want. You often have a clear picture and a clear vision of the excitement behind what your business could look like when you actually implement all of these amazing ideas. I bet you if I pulled each of you individually, if I started calling each of you individually and having these conversations, every single one of you would be like, "Yes, I have at least one great idea that I'm going to implement off of this week. And actually I have a list of probably 10 that I'm going to put in front of my team."

 It's exciting. It's exciting when you think about stepping outside of your box and getting to that next level of growth that you have been aiming and shooting for, and you finally found some great solutions that are going to move you to that. So whether it's this summit this week or another conference you've been to or one you're going to go to in the future, it's exciting and it's energizing and it gets you all jacked up.

 But the problem is that in that excitement, your delivery can come across as let's just say a little intense. That intensity is what makes you effective and so much of your success. So don't lose that intensity. Don't lose that. But you got to watch it with your team. You have to master your craft. Master your presentation if you want to enhance and increase engagement. So Bryan has actually, like we've come out of meetings together and he's come out shaking his head and he's baffled.

 Like we will have said the exact same thing, like the exact same thing, whether it's in front of our team at Sweet or whatever the case is, our advisory councils, whatever. We'll have said the exact same thing. And when I speak, people are like, "Okay, I can get on board with that." And he jokes about it and he's like, "But when I speak, they're like hiding under the table like they're dodging bullets or something." So think about this, and I bet a lot of you could relate to that type of deliver, that type of reaction I should say.

 So think about your own delivery and where you fall on that spectrum. Is your team nodding in agreement and they're interjecting thoughts and it's a collaborative approach when you're bringing things to the table, or are they hiding underneath it going, "Okay, just make it stop so that we can go back and do our jobs." So there's a difference, there's a big difference there. So it's important to understand where you sit on the spectrum, and I'm not saying one way or another is wrong.

 What I'm trying to provide you with is ways for you to get your team on board, get behind your vision so you can truly scale, but not just monetarily. Also, when you look at the abilities on your team, that's magical. That's exciting. So to be clear, I got to say this because I've got some people out there that I can just bet this is going through their head. I am not telling you to sugar coat, not telling you to walk on eggshells in your own company. That is not the message or the delivery here. Okay. I am not telling you to beat around the bush.

 What I am telling you to do is to speak in your team's language. Show your team what the heck is in it for them. Because what's the adage? No one cares about your dreams, your biggest targets, your biggest goals as much as you do. That is just the facts. You can have the best people, whether this is team members, family members, friends, whatever, nobody cares what you want deep down in your soul and your heart more than you. It's you. That's your vision and nobody else can.

 It's the difference between passion and conviction. Somebody can come to you again, a team member, a family member, a friend, and they can have passion behind what you're trying to accomplish. They can have passion towards your vision, but they can't have conviction towards yours. And the difference in that is that conviction is something that they're eating, sleeping, breathing, living it, that's their heart and soul. It's impossible for them to embody that for you. You have to lead with conviction so people can get behind you with their passion.

 And it's the same for your team. They all have a vision of what they want most in their life. They all have their own purpose and their own reason and all of that good stuff. And they need to see how this greater vision for your company impacts them and how it allows them to make a difference. Because the bottom line is, is think about the times we're in right now. People want to know they can make a difference. That's part of what eliminates or minimizes, I don't know whether it eliminates, but it minimizes fear.

 When you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself, whoa, that's powerful. So speak in a way that allows and always ties back to your mission, to your purpose, to your story that we talked about a little bit ago. And to the core of that why that you have. If you can deliver that, awesome, great. If you're the one that can communicate that and you're like, "Brittany, I don't have problems with managing my delivery. Let's talk about the other five things in the simple process because I've mastered it." That's awesome.

 But for the majority of entrepreneurs, of business owners, of lead advisors that I know, that's not always the case. So if you can't, that's okay too as long as you have an integrator who can. Part of the role of an integrator can be that bridge between you and your team. So that's the beauty in finding this person and being able to bring somebody on to take the stuff off of you that you just should not be spending your time on. So master your delivery, master your culture.

 Number four. So the fourth step in your simple methods of creating a killer culture is to get the right people in the right seats. So this is more than just your integrator. This is your collective who as we've talked about this week. So give me an oh yes in the chat if you have had a swamp monster on your team. Okay. Someone who plain and simply makes you want to drain the swamp to just get rid of the problem. So we're going to check out some of these chats.

 We've got yeses, we've got, oh yeses. We've got a big hug, "Heck yes. Haven't we all at some point?" Yeah, Victor, we have, I think so. John, you fired him. Woo. Amen a high five air five on that one, or elbow, whatever we're supposed to do these days. So yeah, I know a lot of people can relate to this and that a swamp monster or somebody that's toxic to your team, that's a life sucker. It's a pain. It's so draining and it's not worth it. Oh my goodness. It is not worth it.

 So how do you get and attract good people? How do you find the diamonds in the rough per se? First off, if you are the business owner, stop doing the hiring. Delegate this task to your integrator or your second in command or whatever you call this person. If you are the second in command that's attending today and you're listening to this, own this process, own the hiring process, make it yours, make it amazing. We're going to talk about a few things on how you can do that.

 So as the primary, as the key advisor, that's just simply not the best use of your time because of the golden rule that I recommend and that is slow to hire, quick to fire. I know at least one of you follows this because you said if you had a swamp monster, you identify them, you fire them. And the thing I want to say here is, there is a way to fire people and to do it in a productive manner that leaves everybody feeling good.

 Because nine times out of 10, if there's somebody that is like truly causing disruption on your team and is upsetting the apple cart, they're totally steering you away from the culture. There's a saying out there, and I can't remember the gentleman that said it, but the person who has the most dominant energy on your team is really how your culture falls underneath. So if you have this one person that's out there just coming through like a tornado, tearing stuff up, well that's how your whole team's going to feel.

 So what happens with that is that a lot of times if somebody is behaving in that way on your team, what it means is that they're not happy either. So you can go to them and be like, "Here's the deal. I think we're both miserable. I don't love this. You don't love this, you're not happy, I'm not happy. And the rest of my team isn't happy, which is a really big concern. I don't know about you, but I think we need to talk about parting ways."

 So there's a way to approach that in a way that's not ... because I know firing for some can be really intimidating. So, that's just a thought process to keep in mind. Good hiring takes time. And this goes back to my rationale behind why I think that the primary advisor, the leader, the founder should not be spending their time here. Good hiring takes time and time is money in your world, my friends. So you would never advise your client, at least I hope you wouldn't, if you would, you should probably jump off.

 But you would never advise your client to make an investment that would intentionally lose them money. You being involved in operational type duties in your business is the same darn thing. If you are spending time on anything that isn't growing your practice, giving you a ton of energy, and moving you towards that greater vision, then you're not maximizing your return on time, which in turn costs money. Again, it's not that this whole thing is all about money. That's not what I'm saying here.

 What I'm saying is if you want to, you want to get to that next level and you want to create a life that you're like, "Man, I'm hopping out of bed. My feet are hitting the floor in the morning. And I can't wait to get started." It's by eliminating all the stuff that you don't care about, that you don't want to do, and you're not passionate about. And I'm gonna put this on the table right now that some of you might be like, "Well, some of that stuff, it's fine that I do it and it's still productive and it's still good."

 No, let's get rid of that stuff. Let's get you focusing on the things that drive you, that give you energy and that are just causing you to blow up in amazing, amazing, beautiful ways. So here's a tip that you can implement immediately with your hiring process. So this is from Keith Cunningham. Keith Cunningham was an American business owner who's best known for making $100 million dollars, losing $100 million dollars, and then making it again.

 So I think he's somebody to pay attention to because he has hit all time highs. He has hit all time lows, and he's probably one of the most genius businessmen that I have ever met, that Bryan has ever engagement with. Dre, same thing. He's brilliant. He has a book called, The Road Less Stupid. Buy it. It's awesome. So it's total side note there, but it's good stuff. So Keith has a process that he lays out in his book called The Road Less Stupid. It is absolute gold.

 So with any new hire, any prospective team member that you're interviewing or your COO is interviewing or your operations or your integrator, ask them, what are the first three things you would do if I hired you today? What are the first three things you would do if I hired you today? The ones who can answer this are the ones who will end up being exceptional. Here's the caveat. There's no right or wrong answer here. You're not looking for someone to give you the magic formula for future success that you've been looking for your whole life.

 If that happens, awesome, definitely hire them. But what you're looking for is someone who can think on their feet, who came in prepared to answer a question like that and who can put something on the table that at least makes you go, "Hmm, I dig it." So what you're looking for is somebody who you're like, "They did their homework. They at least know enough about my business to be able to formulate an intelligent answer to that question." It's absolutely amazing when you put that in place.

 You talk about enhancement of culture. So don't let the people who show up for you in the interview process, and I don't just mean show up in the sense that they comb their hair, they throw on a dress shirt, they hand you a resume, but rather the people who actually show up. Don't let them walk out the door and escape your grasp because great people equals a killer culture. We've actually put this in place with our last hires at Sweet Financial.

 And I can tell you, we just brought in somebody who's training to be the new integrator at Sweet Financial and she's exceptional. And she had answers to those questions and they were brilliant. They were well thought out and you could tell she was paying attention during our interview because she circled back on a couple of comments I had made. So she was on her game. And you know what? We hired her, we got her the pay that she needed even though it meant compressing the margins a little bit for some temporary period of time.

 We also see the greater vision and that's what allows you to scale and to maximize your team's abilities. So now I'm freed up to do stuff that I'm much better at than some of just the day to day operational type stuff. I can help be the vision. Bryan can keep going in the direction he's going with the visionary and creative aspects of growing the business, we can engage further in the marketing and all the stuff that helps people grow. Give back to you, the advisor community, and Sweet Financial's running like a well oiled machine.

 To give you context to this, we've brought in to date 56 million in net assets. That's net people. So, that's crazy. It allows you, and we've been spending a ton of time serving our advisor audience. So that's the beauty and getting the right people in the right seat of having an integrator and being so stink and clear on what it is that you want that it's impossible to be misunderstood. That's the power of the first three steps that we talked about. The first four, I'm sorry.

 So number five, utilize a learning method. So that fifth step in creating that simple culture, that simple method to building your business, utilize a learning method. Think about an employee that you have had, one who time and time and time again has made the same darn mistakes. The same issue's popped up over and over. It's stressful, it's frustrating, it makes you want to drink wine. I guess maybe that's just me because all I can think about as a glass of wine later today.

 But in all seriousness, this can be solved with the right tools. With a loaded toolbox, you can turn any frustrating situation into a total stink and win. So here's the framework for this. And if you are strategic coach members, you eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. Dan Sullivan is absolutely genius in laying the foundation for this. I know we talk about him a lot. Again, we don't have any sort of affiliation other than just being in his program.

 I think Bryan's been in his program for over 20 years. I participated for over seven. He's just got great stuff, great foundations for really making sure that you can maximize your business. So the concept of the foundation to be able to correct mistakes and move on it and really create something productive from it is essentially measured in three key things. You look at what went right. So here's the issue. It's just like anything, if you have children, if you have grandchildren, you're going to know what I'm talking about here.

 It is so easy to catch people doing things wrong. I'm just going to put myself out there for a minute. My two year old, she's like, "You know what, I love to color and I'm going to call on mom's walls in the living room." So the first thing that I'm inclined to do is be like, "What the heck are you doing? Put the colors down, and you're in a timeout." But on the other side, it's like she's expressing her creativity. Is it going to kill me to touch up that paint? Absolutely not. Could it hurt her little soul if I just freak out about it? Absolutely.

 Same thing goes for team members. People make mistakes, things happen, but my guess is they probably did a lot of things right leading up to that one mistake. So when you're sitting there and you're honing in on, "Oh my gosh, they did step 11 out of the 12 step process wrong, but everything else was nailed." Well, let's focus on the things that went right first because it gets you in the right state of mind. Again, mindset is absolutely key to helping you scale and to keep a level head and to do things and be constructive.

 Man, let's learn from our mistakes, but let's look at what went right first. Then we go into what went wrong. So all of these, those first 10 steps you followed, you nailed them. Here's where it fell apart and here's why. So, pointing out exactly what the core issue was, and again, not sugarcoating because sugarcoating doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help anybody get better, but you can have a constructive, productive conversation around it.

 And actually that's going to be exceptional for what David Wood is going to talk about today when he joins us, let's see, in about 25 minutes or so. He's going to talk about how you can format some of these really difficult conversations that you either want to just avoid or you want to just come unglued and be like, "I'm coming in like a tornado hot because I am mad." So you look at what went right, you look at what went wrong, and then you measure what are the steps that are needed to ensure this doesn't occur again?

 So, that's essentially the foundation of one of Dan Sullivan strategic coach tools. The experience transformer. Bryan mentioned it on Monday, but it is absolutely, the concept in itself is brilliant for any sort of course correction. So again, this isn't necessarily for somebody on your team that's turned into a swamp monster who you've gone through this process with and they make the same mistakes over and over and you're ready to rip your hair out or cry in a bathroom or whatever you got to do to get through. That's not what I'm saying.

 So this is for the ones that it's like, "Gosh, they're a great team member. Something's clearly happening. There's a breakdown in the system. Let's fix this and let's put some steps in place. Let's build a new process. Let's enhance our workflow." Whatever the thing is that needs to be done to make sure that this doesn't occur again. Then the fourth thing that I would actually add to this that we've done personally here at Sweet Financial is who else needs to know?

 See, what happens in organizations is that learning curves are often missed. So, they're missed when they're kept a secret. Don't be ashamed and don't let your team feel ashamed when there's a mistake that's made because these are opportunities to learn and to grow. So at Sweet, if we have somebody that there's something that fell through the cracks, there's a mistake that was made, a process fell apart, whatever the case is, we actually use it as a team case study.

 So then I'll make sure it gets decimated to other team members because it's like if Jess on our team can make a mistake, well then Sarah could too. It's the same thing. Everybody could fall victim to this, so how can we close the loop so everybody knows where the gap was? How do we open the lines of communication, continue working towards that greater vision, and everybody gets better in the meantime. I would call that a win. That's a win. When you are able to take a mistake that's made, a ball that's dropped, a process that's broke and make it so that everybody learns from it and that nobody makes that same mistake again.

 That's golden. That's a way to grow. That's a way to scale the ability on your team. So by going through a process like this, you're suddenly, you're no longer dwelling on the negative but you're rather turning it into a positive. You're going from, "Crap, the world just fell apart," to, "Hey, this is a really great learning experience." So there's magic in that. There is absolute magic. As our little friend Charlie Brown, he says a mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn from it. That is a huge foundational aspect of a killer culture.   This is how you build that self-managed team that we talked about. One that can operate on its own, one that can self-correct, one that can be in the constant mode of looking for even better ways of doing things. We get comments and you guys are amazing. We've had comments from so many advisors this week that are like, "Gosh, you guys are killing it. You guys have such a well oiled machine. You're doing things that we haven't seen people do yet." And the comments have been amazing, like absolutely amazing and we're in complete gratitude for those.  

 But here's the deal. We're not perfect. But the thing that helps us differentiate as an advisory practice, as wealth managers, whatever you want to call it, the thing that makes us different is we are continuing to grow. You know what? Mistakes are made, things happen, things break down. People have an off day. That stuff is reality, but we don't sit and dwell on it. We look at it and say, "How can we grow? How can we learn? How can we advance and move forward? And how can we kick butt and take names tomorrow because tomorrow's another day?"

 That's how you get over that hump and that's how you grow and scale. The sixth and final simple method to creating an absolute killer culture is to create an experience for your team. Here's the deal. When you look at culture, as I mentioned earlier, it's not just about the perks. That's like one component or like a benefit to a great culture. That's not what it all encompasses, but you absolutely want to create an experience and an environment because if you can attract that top talent on the front end, you want to keep them and you want to give them a reason to stay.

 So here's the deal. If you're here, if you're listening right now, you are likely exceptional, absolutely exceptional at taking care of your clients. You wouldn't be investing this time. Life is busy right now, things are crazy. We're experiencing things that we haven't experienced in this world before. We're in unique times, but you decided, you sitting here right now, we're like, "I'm going to block out a couple hours out of my day for five days in a week and I'm going to work on growing myself, growing my team, and coming up with new ideas to serve my clients."

 So you showing up here, I know that, and I can answer that for you. But in the hustle and bustle of delivering that service, of delivering that exceptional experience to our client base, sometimes we forget to do the same for our teams. Sometimes we're so busy showing up for our clients that we forget to show up for our team. That is one of the biggest issues that I see with turnover is when you as the primary, when your operations person, when whoever, when you are so darn busy with client stuff that you can't show up for your team.

 And I'm not faulting you in that because I know the struggle and I know the busy-ness and I know all the stuff that comes with building, scaling, growing, and just managing and maintaining a team and a business. But you have to make that concerted effort to show up for them. That's how you're going to get to your vision. It's the least you can do, really. So one way to do that is to create a dream board. Have everyone in the ... all your team members, put images on there of what is most important to them, what sets their soul on fire, and then take it a step further and help encourage them to make it happen.

 This is something that's so powerful. So we've done this at Sweet Financial and it's fun because you'll hear people, they'll walk by it. It's on the way to the restroom, so you can't miss it. You'll see people walk by it and they're like, "Oh hey, I forgot. Marsha wants to go to a beach vacation or so-and-so's goal is to build their own house. And oh my gosh, they're actually breaking ground next month. I didn't even think about that association. They're accomplishing one of their dreams."

 So by doing this, you're creating this awareness in your business and amongst your team of what's important to each other because you're going to have some people that are driven by the monetary stuff or I guess the things that monetary rewards can provide like trips or material things or homes or cars or whatever the case is. But you're going to have other people. And we've had, this is a testament on our dream board at Sweet that are like, "You know what I'm driven by? I'm driven by the fact that Sweet Financial allows me to have some flexibility in my life so that I can show up for my kids while they're still under my roof." Those are the kinds of things we see.

 So we did something really cool and I encourage you guys to all go check this out because it's for the public, the world to see. If you go to the Sweet Financial Services Facebook page, don't squirrel out on me right now and go do it. I hope you put your phones down. We're talking about later today, but go to the Sweet Financial Services Facebook page and check out the dream campaign that we did. We have our word here at Sweet Financial is possibility.

 So we feel that we create possibility for our clients. We create possibilities for our team members. So I want you to go and look at what we did on social media. You will notice it is nothing to do, these particular posts, it shares each of our team members, one of their biggest dreams, one of their biggest visions of their future. They wrote it out for us. We put it out there in their words, and it was so fun. And you'll see the increase in engagement of that versus, "Hey, check out our COVID page."

 It's not saying that's not important. I think that's a valuable resource to put out there. But humanization is so key. So sharing your dreams and your hopes and your vision for your future. Because all of a sudden for us, we're attracting the prospects who are like, "Dang, that's cool." They're like, "I want to be part of that. I want to realize my dreams are possible." So, I want you to check out that campaign. Check out what everybody shared.

 It'd be really fun inspiration if this is something that you feel is aligned with how you do business and how you operate with your team. And I briefly mentioned something earlier this week, and again, this is just something that helps drive a positive environment. Culture is so much more than the warm fuzzy stuff, but creating a positivity jar, catching people doing things right. Again, to reiterate, it is so darn easy to catch people doing things wrong. It takes concerted effort to catch them doing things right.

 So, we'll do a fun little award each quarter. It might be like a bottle of their favorite wine or a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant or whatever it is that's on their preference list because just like we track preferences for our clients, we track them for our team members as well. Again, treat your team just like you want to treat your clients because they are your absolute number one asset without your team. If you're not a single person operation right now that's just trying to grow and scale and get a team.

 If you have a full team and everybody walked out the door tomorrow and was like, "See you, you can do this on your own." Think about what that would do to your business. That's scary. That's really scary to think about. So you want to make sure you're taking care of them, that you're catching people doing things right. So what we encourage is we actually have these little slips that are right by the jar that people can fill out and recognize each other for the good stuff.

 So it's encouraging that type of conversation amongst the team and at the end of the quarter, we read them out loud to everybody. People get little like, "Hey, high fives like great job. You killed it on this event." Things happen. There's some things that Bryan and I both were reading we're going, "I didn't even know that happened." So that's cool because there's things happening behind the scenes that you wouldn't have known about otherwise. You are settings your team retreats to have some dedicated time to have it all be about them.

 So a retreat. What by that is not like let's all go and sing kumbaya together, let's go offsite, let's do some planning. But here's a differentiator for you. And again, you're looking to differentiate to attract top talent. This is actually something you could advertise that you do if you decided that was beneficial for you. So when you have these planning meetings or retreats as we call them, work through exercises that are focused on them and the path that drove them to this point.

 So at every single offsite meeting that I facilitate, whether it's for Sweet Financial or other businesses that I coach and engage with, at every single offsite meeting, which happens usually a few times a year, we actually dedicate the bulk of the meeting to creating exercises where the team actually focuses on what they want. So I'm not sitting there going, "Tell me how we can be a better business and how you can do more for us." I know I'm being a little facetious there, but you get the point.

 So what I'm doing is I'm asking them, "What do you want most? What's your vision? Now let's take the time. Let's hear from you." And you know what's crazy about this? What's absolutely crazy is by me asking questions about them, what matters to them, who matters to them, why they do what they do. It always, and I'm not exaggerating and saying this word, it always spins back to the business. They end up coming up with ways through this conversation that allows them to be authentically who they are, to pursue their dreams, and to tie it back at the same time to help they can serve our clients and our business in a way they've never done before.

 My goodness. So they themselves are leveling up basically on their own because we paused to show that we cared and we take the time to actually hear them. So, that's something that you could implement immediately is have some exercises at these retreats that you're like, "Okay, let's take a break and take a breath from focusing on the business. Let's talk about you because you matter." That's the thing that people need. Whether it's your clients or your team members, they need to know that they matter. That's what gets people to buy into your vision.

 So again, make your culture simple. To recap, in case anybody missed any of the points, is to decide what you stand for. Hire an integrator, please, hire an integrator, manage and master your delivery. Get the right people, utilize a learning method, and create an experience. So my challenge for you as I round this out, get ready to take some questions, is to decide which of these six methods that you can implement today.

 Just pick one. Again, you don't have to go back and say, "We need to change the way we do everything in our office and we need to do this and we need to do that. And team ready. Let's go." Just pick one, pick one to start with, and then work your way backwards into that bigger picture so you complete the simple methodology. By following these six simple steps, six simple steps, you're going to have the tools to create a killer culture.

 So there's that. So, I'm gonna get out of this presentation. I'm going to stop my screen share and I want to open this up to see if anybody has questions. If you want to vet anything that you've got going on on your team, anything at all, basically I'm here to answer and here to help and whatever else.

 

Draye Redfern:

We've got a question here, Brittany. I have a client service associate that works with me. At what point do you know you should hire someone else? How do you know your current revenue can support this?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah, so that's a great question. The biggest thing is start talking to your team members. Talk to your client service person. What's their workload like? How are they feeling? Are they drowning? Are your service standards being met? There's not necessarily, and some might argue this, but I think Bryan would attest to what I'm about to say here is that there's not a magic number. And actually to kind of throw a wrench in this, you want to actually hire before you can afford it because if you can get ahead of the game, ahead of the curve, that's another secret to exponential growth.

 So if you're starting to question and you're like, "Oh, we're kind of at that point where I think we might need somebody," now is the time to start looking. I can't give you a magic number. I can tell you that we tend to keep payroll. It's usually around like 33 to 35% of total gross. That's a number that you could go off of. To be honest with you, and Bryan will attest to this as well, we're willing to compress margins if it means getting exceptional talent.

 And the other thing to do is keep your antennas up. If you're in your community and you were like, "Wow, I just got my socks knocked off because that person was such an exceptional person, they served me, they, whatever, they showed up, they were great," keep them in mind. Start making a list of people that you could bring onto your team.

 

Draye Redfern:

Can you give some examples as well? Can you give some examples on the type of functions an integrator does? Is it similar to client service manager or office manager?

 

Brittany Anderson:

I would say an integrator is more along the lines of an office manager. And actually, well, I would highly recommend that book Rocket Fuel. I can't say it better than Gino Wickman can. He literally, I'm not kidding you, there's like a two page bullet point of here are the exact characteristics and essentially what the duties would be for this integrator type person. But it definitely falls along the lines more so of operations versus client service.

 

Draye Redfern:

I wish everybody could share their chat. Oh yeah. If you want everyone to see your chat. Some people are just messaging all of us. Do you want everyone else to see it? You can send your messages to all panelists plus all attendees. That would fix D Smith Three's request of people see some of the other chat questions. What else we got here? What was the third step again? The M?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Managing your delivery.

 

Draye Redfern:

Managing your deliveries. So where do you find the best exercises to utilize the retreats, to focus on teams, books, ideas, et cetera?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Oh my gosh. A lot of our principals we derive from strategic coach. I know, again, we've talked about that so much and I don't think we could say it anymore, but really that's a lot of our foundational stuff. But to be totally honest with you, I create a lot of the tools just from the stuff that I absorbed. So like in our mastermind, a lot of the tools is stuff that myself and Bryan have collaborated on to create. And then Dre has a whole slew of stuff that he does with his team.

 We honestly create a lot of our own intellectual property just because we're like, "We need to make it for us and we're taking the best of the best that we've found from all these different masterminds we're part of, all the different resources that we read." Goodness gracious, I don't even want to know the number of books that we three read together every year. Good grief. So yeah, that's really ... strategic coach is the foundation and then we create a lot of our own.

Draye Redfern:

I do at least 50 a year. I know you guys are about the same. So a couple of hundred books a year maybe. I don't know. It's a lot.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Dre, I think our kids instead of like stories, fairytales, we're like, "Let's read how to create your vivid vision."

 

Draye Redfern:

"This is how to increase your future revenue."

 

Brittany Anderson:

"Marketing one on one."

 

Bryan Sweet:

My wife would [crosstalk 00:56:12].

 

Draye Redfern:

Speaking [crosstalk 00:56:12]. So there's even an opportunity, I talked about this in the mastermind a few weeks ago, I believe, is that like right now, we have a kid in Scouts, she's 11, but she couldn't do the door to door stuff, whatever else, you can use this opportunity to teach them things. So I took the time and brought her into the office and we showed her how to build her on website and shoot her own video and she sold out in the first six hours.

 So, there's certainly opportunities around like quarantining where you can at least teach your kids some stuff also. It's good stuff all the way around. I saw a couple other here. Kay Bell. If you think you can afford it, you can think about how you would grow the revenue and assets. Do you have any ideas for a stay in place retreat?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Stay in place retreat. Yeah, Zoom. Honestly, what we're doing right now, again, model after, the only change that I would make is if you're doing a stay at home ordered retreat, make sure that everybody has the functionality. So, you'll schedule it as a regular meeting and allow everybody to have their cameras on, especially within your small team. We just could not possibly do that with hundreds and hundreds of advisors on here. I'd love to see your faces.

 We all feed off of that. It's just not feasible and it gets messy and then bandwidth goes crazy, yada yada. So I would definitely recommend use the Zoom platform, have everybody have cameras on and facilitate it just like you would any other meeting. I actually have some coaching clients who I've done that for in the last few weeks. We've done little, we call them little happy hours with Sweet where we do check-in pulses. It's not the same as a full fledge retreat.

 I want to get everybody together in a room because I'm gonna make it real weird and just give hugs when all this is over. But really allowing Zoom and utilizing technology, do it the same as you would a client meeting to get everybody on, get the cameras on.

 

Draye Redfern:

So Tom, the [Flight15 00:58:08], love our [flightials 00:58:10]. Who on the team does the staff reviews?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Staff reviews is actually, so I do some of them currently, but we're shifting that over to our new integrator. So it's your operations person, integrator, et cetera. So I will no longer be doing those. The other thing we have too is we've assigned department heads. So we have a concierge or client service department head. She does her department reviews. She works closer with them than I do. So can give on the spot feedback. Same thing with our wealth services department.

 One of the partners in the business, he does those. And then same thing for the advisors. We have somebody appointed over there and then our integrator kind of takes care of everybody else, and then also gets the full reports from the department heads on if she needs to be in anything else at all. So, that's how we've structured it. But there's a million different ways you can slice and dice that.

 

Draye Redfern:

So we've got a bunch from someone named Anonymous Attendee.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Bring it on.

 

Bryan Sweet:

That's kind of a funny name, Dre.

 

Draye Redfern:

[crosstalk 00:59:05]. So, it's in the Q&A. I keep hearing about mastermind. What is this?

 

Brittany Anderson:

 z Like for Ultimate Advisor Mastermind, for our mastermind that we run, for example, we have a full application process and part of our agreement is that people have to be willing to come in with their best ideas, be willing to share, be willing to be vulnerable, and be willing to just be stinking honest. Because we can't help you if you don't start by telling the truth. 

 So what we do then is we collectively talk on things like ours is geared towards marketing automations, team building, scalability in your business. So we bring the best content that we can, and then we talk about it. We have speakers, we have presentations, there's some masterminds that are strictly marketing. There's some that are strictly scaling. It really depends on what you want. What we do with ours is bring together some of the best people, have them share ideas, have them bet, and then we bring the best of the best speakers that we can to them.

 

Bryan Sweet:

Some of which are on this today.

 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah.

 

Draye Redfern:

Yeah. Mastermind get some first though. Another anonymous attendee. My vision is actually being less of a team of coworkers and more of a team of a sole practitioner. Is this not sustainable long term?

 

Brittany Anderson:

Here's the deal. This is just like what we say when we're talking to some of our mastermind members. Every advisor, we believe that every advisor has the right to create their own definition of success. If your definition of success is to be more of like a sole one man operation, you don't want to deal with anything else, that's fine. The only thing that I would say is it could hurt your scalability because there's power in teams.

 Now, we have had people or advisors that have decided they don't want any live in person W2 employees and they bring in experts or consultants. So they might have somebody like Dre help with their marketing strategy. They might have somebody like me come in and do some of this stuff with here's how you can build the foundations and the processes, and then you can have virtual assistants and that kind of thing do it. Probably not the best way. So I would say that you need to create like what is it that you want to do in your company and then we could work it backwards from there.

 Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you're hearing on our Ultimate Advisor Podcast, don't keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimateadvisormastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of the Ultimate Advisor community, and we look forward to a continued relationship.