Speaker 1  00:08

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 to create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by our hosts, Bryan sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to 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 in to another amazing episode of the ultimate advisor podcast.

Brittany Anderson  01:07

Welcome back to your ultimate advisor podcast. Brittany Anderson here with Mr. Bryan sweet. And we are rounding out this little tiny three-part miniseries that we've been doing, where we're talking about how you can create opportunity for your business, regardless of demographics. So again, the last couple episodes, we've given the context or the example that, you know, we're trending quickly towards being a firm at the time of this recording, of managing nearly a billion dollars in assets under management, and how we've managed to do that in a town of 10,000 people. So the point is not to be boastful or not to brag about that in any capacity. It's just to talk a little bit about, you know, what are some of the things that we're doing that are working that other advisors could potentially replicate and, and take and use and do to grow their business, and to help serve their clients at a whole new capacity or whole new level. So today, what we're going to do is we're going to dive in and kind of round the whole thing out with the notion that you, as an advisor, as a business owner, you've got to decide that you're more than your circumstances. Now, again, I've referenced this term before. If you've listened to a previous podcast, this is not woowoo stuff, this isn't just like the warm fuzzy fluff, you know, touchy feely kind of thing. It's really making decisions about how you manage your mindset. And understanding and realizing that mindset is really everything when it comes to reaching and achieving certain levels of success and what success really means to you. So we have choices when it comes to driving success, we can either see that in life, that things are happening to us, or things are happening for us. So there are a million different reasons that you could choose not to pursue the success that you truly want. There are things that happen, there are bad things that pop up, there are struggles and difficulties and things that could truly cause you to stop dead in your tracks, throw in the towel and be like forget about it, you know, it'd be easy to say that you know what, we can't grow anymore, I don't really want to grow anymore, because of X, Y, or Z. So there's an interesting conversation that's happened, you know, more and more I've seen this recently, is advisor. So part of the whole premise under ultimate advisor coaching under how we interact and engage with and teach advisors is that we believe that every single advisor is capable of reaching their definition of success. But something that I hear people say time and time again, is Oh, I don't want to reach that level of success. I don't need that much revenue. I don't need to manage that many assets, when in reality, it's not necessarily true. What's creeping up there is fear. And what's creeping up there is the unknown of how the heck do you even do that? Right, I don't know that I want to go down that route. So again, it's important to delineate here that it's okay, if you're if your definition of success is, you know, working two days a week, having a book of maybe 100 clients and having to service people, there's nothing wrong with that. And if your big goal for your future is to have 50 plus employees in multiple locations across the US, then you want to have billions and billions of dollars in assets under management. That's awesome, too. But the point is, is don't hinder your level of success because of fear. Just be intentional about what you want out of life. And then just go after it with everything that you have in you. So again, it's important to create your own definition of ideal success, and not let the fact that you're in a certain area. That you have a lot of localized competition, that you need new team members or that you need to replace team members, or whatever it is that you're telling yourself, don't let those things actually get in the way of your full capabilities. And I think this is interesting, too. You know, when you think about what you put out into the universe, like what you're saying you want to achieve, if you're literally saying out loud, oh, you know, I don't want that level of success, I don't want to get I don't want to, you know, have that much revenue, well guess what's gonna happen, you're gonna put roadblocks in front of you, like Naturally Speaking. And again, I'm not going to go down this whole because we could go on for days about this, because it's just so interesting. And it's, you know, there's evidence of it everywhere. But whatever you're putting out into the universe is what your brain is going to try to find evidence of. So we have this thing called the reticular activating system. And it's like, we used this example before, but I think it's just so true. So if you're, let's say, you're in the market, you're shopping for a vehicle, and you're like, I want a black SUV with a certain trim to it, and this color interior, and whatever, all of a sudden, you start seeing those everywhere. And while you'd like to think that it's just because you have really great taste, and that's just what's popular and hot right now. It's not true. It's just that your brain is literally wired to look for those things, because it's what you want. So using that car example, is just perfect, because so many people have experienced that kind of phenomenon before. But it's true in business. It's true in success. It's true in lack of success. And I think that's something that's so important to understand. So Bryan, you know, there's a story that I want you to share, because we talk about this all the time, and you know, can be a good check and balance for each other and really saying, Okay, well, you know, are we limiting our thinking, are we limiting, you know, what we want to accomplish, and you have a cool story about, you know, maybe some goals or some vision you laid out a while ago, and how that actually came to fruition? So

Bryan Sweet  06:53

I'd love for you to jump in on that. Absolutely. First of all, before I get into that this is such, this is maybe my favorite topic of all time. And it's one that I and you both could probably chat on for hours. But I will tell you, this is the biggest issue that advisors deal with, and getting over this issue will be the easiest thing to help get your success. But anyway, back to the story. Yeah, we were in a meeting a while back. And I was going through some old materials that I had, and came up with a 10 year success plan that I had put together as part of an exercise for Strategic Coach. So at the meeting, we started looking at what was the goal and you know, the timeframes and the crazy thing that came out of that is every single item on there, we actually accomplished Now, unfortunately, I had somewhere misplaced or hadn't looked at it for most of those years. But because it was in my mind, originally, I was acting on those activities to make them happen. And it is really a an amazing thing. And Brittany, correct me if I'm gonna say this wrong, but Dan Sullivan has a saying that your eyes only see and your ears only hear what you're thinking about, or is it something like that? Yeah, yep. Along those lines. Yeah. And so it's really important that you think about things that you want to get to, and don't let the negative things come in. And so I think the biggest issue to advisors having more success, is their limited belief, they get to a certain point. And as Brittany said, they either get fearful, they don't think they can do it. And that becomes their reality. And so this little six inches between our ears can be our best friend, or it can be our worst enemy. And I would suggest you want it to be your friend. Well, how can you make it be your friend? Well, I think it's just priming the pump on an ongoing basis. So it does what you want it to do. So here's a really quick idea that every single person that's listening to this can do starting tomorrow. And that is spend time each morning or if you're a night person, do it at night on what we call thinking time. Now what is thinking time, it's just looking at journaling, writing about thinking about what is possible. What would I like my life to look like? What would I want my practice To look like just everything that you would like your future to become, and think about it a good Another good thing is to when you're thinking about it, write it out. So you can look at it, again, to remind yourself of all of those things that are important. And thinking time comes from a gentleman by the name of Keith Cunningham. And he's got an amazing book, probably the best business book I've ever listened to, or read called the road less stupid, which is a great name, by the way. But one of the things that I have done is I've changed it from thinking time, to the word believing time. Because if you're thinking about it, and looking at it, all of a sudden, you're going to start believing it's true. And as soon as you start believing it's true, those things will actually start happening. And that 10 year example that I gave earlier, is just an example. And I really wasn't even thinking on that, except when I originally created it. So just think how quickly you could get to your goals and objectives, if you literally every day thought positive about what it is that you want for your future. And then as Dan Sullivan says, all of these things seem to pop up right when you need them, to help you get there. And I can't even tell you the hundreds of times where I'll go to a coach meeting a genius networker, what Brittany, and I'll be in a meeting, like, I just saw this, or I had this. And it was like, what we needed to take that next step, but you were consciously looking for it. And if you're consciously looking for it, it will pop up. And I am such a believer in that because it's happened so many times, I can't even tell you, but it's just so important that you really think right? Listen, review everything that you want to have happen in life, and maybe not everything, but you will be shocked at what will happen if you think about it regularly. And the other thing I think is really important is you need to make goals and have commitments. But one of the things that I've found is, and this works for us, it may not work for you. But you know, they always say set three year five year goals, I look at it a little bit differently, you know, we look three years out, but we focus on two timeframes, most specifically. And that's a 90 day timeframe. And then we have a 25 year time frame. Now the 25 year may be longer than maybe you're planning on working, but maybe the firm will be around. And the nice thing about that is 90 days, pick three major improvements that will help you get to your vision. And if all you did is knock those three items out, you've made some great progress. But why not look longer than 90 days is I don't know about you. But things change a lot. And one of the nice things is if you don't set three and five year goals that you say will never change. Well, the next 90 days allows you to be a lot more flexible than being on this path, that probably is going to be different. But if you have a big, big goal for 25 years from now, all those little 90 days will give you 100 opportunities to build that ideal scenario. And that concept is once again a Dan Sullivan concept, but it works well. And what I'm finding is that we have more change today than we've ever had. And so the ability to set, you know, midterm goals is more difficult, more difficult, because technology advances, other things that you learn. So if you've not thought about that, that's, you know, really worked well for us. I think the other thing when it comes to setting goals that's really important, is set your own goals. And don't be influenced by anybody else. You know, use them as a mentor, use them as you know, somebody that motivates you, but what's important to you because if it's not important to you, you're less likely to actually accomplish it because you're accomplishing somebody else's objectives and not yours. And for those of you that struggle with that, Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy, who we've had on some of our summits before, are coming out with a brand new book called gap versus game. And it's all about how do you look at where are, where you've been and where you're going and looking at the accomplishments versus what you haven't gotten done. And that I think if you look at that concept, you will be shocked at how much progress you've made, maybe it's not as much as you want. And that'll be a motivator to keep going versus going, Oh, I was slightly off on this one goal. And now I'm a failure versus I've really got a million things done positively, and why I should be really happy with myself. So that books coming out in October,

Brittany Anderson  15:33

Hey, Brittany here, stopping and pausing for a moment to talk about something that we've had so many of you inquire about, and that is our ultimate advisor, mastermind. Now, I'm going to start by saying if you are not a growth minded individual, if you are not somebody who is focused on taking your business to the next level, if you're not focused on engaging your team, and helping them to help you in turn, level up the business, the service model, how you provide that wow experience to clients. If those things are not your focus, just fast forward right now, because the ultimate advisor mastermind would not then be for you. However, if you are looking to take your business to the next level, if you want to experience exponential growth and feel supported along the way, if you want to start working smarter and not harder, if you want to help your team members to work within the God given talents that they were provided, and use those skill sets in a way they haven't yet to help support you and your business to help them realize their biggest goals, their biggest dreams. If you want creative approaches to marketing, I know that can be an intimidating word. But we're not talking here about the fancy Facebook stuff, or you know, the latest and greatest, but rather looking at how you can market what you do, how you can express how you're different, and how you can truly differentiate yourself in a crowded market space. If those are problems you're looking to solve, then you absolutely want to go check out ultimateadvisormastermind.com to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth.

Bryan Sweet  17:33

Another great book, to kind of wrap your head around in being limiting beliefs and kind of helping you think that anything is possible is a book called becoming supernatural by Joe dispenza. And that's a really, really informational book.

Brittany Anderson  17:53

You know, I think, Bryan, when you're talking along the lines of books, I kind of have to chuckle. Because I under ultimate advisor coaching, when we have members or advisors join our mastermind, they laugh at the influx of books that we provide. So not only do we give recommendations, we actually send a bunch of cool books. So it just kind of made me chuckle as you were going through those examples that there's something to be said about being a lifelong learner. And I think to just the whole idea of when Bryan's talking about mindset and talking about you know, intentionality and creating your success and paving that path and all the things that come with it. Being open to these resources is truly what helps a person reach those new levels, but also just open your mind up to other opportunities and ideas. So Brandon didn't need to jump in there. But I I just thought that was kind of an important and kind of a funny thing to to push on a little bit.

Bryan Sweet  18:48

No, thank you for doing that. It is just, I don't even know how to really describe it. But if people just started believing in themselves and thinking positively, and these little things that I mentioned earlier have been helpful to me. Literally anybody on this podcast can accomplish so much more than you're currently accomplishing. And, you know, the goal of the ultimate advisor, mastermind and all the coaching we do and is is part of it is just helping you think bigger and out of the box. And we all get brought up in an environment where when you're a little child, you could be anything. And then you start going to school and you run into all sorts of people that say, Well, you can't do that. And well that's silly. What the heck are you even thinking about that? And the sooner you can get away from that stinking thinking as Zig Ziglar used to call it faster your success levels will go so I better turn it over to you Brittany because this will go on for about eight more hours and bore people to death but I just absolutely Love this topic. And it's so, so important to help people get better. Because if you believe in yourself, there's nobody better to believe in than yourself. And no one cares about you more than yourself. And so if you just continue to fill your mind with things that help build that, you're gonna have nothing but continued better, much more enjoyable success,

Brittany Anderson  20:27

there's so much truth to what you said. And I think where you're at right now, you're great, you're great where you're at, but we all have so much capacity to be even better and better by, you know, different definitions, too. So whether it's, you know, reaching a new level of success, whether it's diving into your personal development, whether it's opening your mind, or embracing kind of new mindsets, there's all all sorts of areas that we can become even better at as human beings, not just advisors. And the other thing that I kept thinking, there's this whole theme, as Bryan you were sharing is about being intentional towards success, but not chasing it. And I think there's an important line in the sand that needs to be drawn there. And this is an interesting topic that I've seen come up more and more and more lately, from highly successful, high type A achievers. So I think it's something to pay attention to. You know, I think that when you have a desperation towards some benchmark, some proverbial level of success that maybe doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, if it's not aligned to your greater vision, you can become much more prone to chasing shiny objects. And you know, it regardless, if you're entrepreneurial in nature, and you're visionary in nature, shiny objects are a real thing like that's shiny object syndrome, and having to kind of bat away things that fly your way. It's a real thing that a lot of people deal with a lot of really successful people deal with. But I think there's an interesting adage, Darren Hardy, he is the founder of Success Magazine, he has a really cool, kind of like an email sequence, I guess you could call it but Darren daily video. And recently, he did one and I kind of almost fell off my chair actually listening to him talk in the way that he was because it was so different than what I've heard before. But he talked about the importance of setting a goal or setting a target because we need targets to move towards, and we need something to aim at, but then actually forgetting about it, and kind of throwing it out the way or out of the way and really trusting and enjoying the journey. Because it's like Bryan said, you know, if you have some massive revenue, or a un goal, or whatever it is that you're looking at, if you don't hit it, I mean, if you're a high-achieving person, it can cause you to get really down on yourself and really frustrated. But whereas if you're measuring the progress that was actually made towards that target, and you see all of the great things you've put in place, it doesn't mean that you're a failure, it just means that you haven't quite figured out exactly what works to get you to that thing. So then the excitement comes into play that you've got another quarter, another 90 days, another whatever measure of time to try to figure it out and get even closer. So we end up again, as a high achiever, myself, it's easy to get down on yourself when you're not hitting something that you know, you really, really want for whatever reason, but rather just trust the journey a little bit, actually heard a really, really funny quote, The other day, I was listening to an interview with a gal who has built multiple seven and eight figure businesses. And she made the comment that money is like a man, if you chase it, it runs from you. And I thought that was absolutely hilarious. But I started thinking about that relative to success, too. If you're constantly chasing some level of success, and there's no real y or core vision that's around it, or that's that it's centered on, you're not going to ever achieve it. And you're never going to be able to define what success really means to you. So again, it's the funny quote, "money is like a man, if you chase it, it runs from you." I mean, it caught your attention. And it was a little provocative and whatever. That's the whole point in saying things like that. But really reality speaking, it's so true, like people chase success, and they're constantly going after bigger and better. And whatever it is that that next benchmark is just trust the journey a little bit and enjoy it and have fun along the way, because you really only get one goal around the sun. And why live it stressed out and beating yourself up when you've accomplished so much already. So just like Bryan, I mean, it's one of those things where we could talk on this topic for hours on end. One thing that I do want to push on though is I was reading something recently and again, we absorb you know, all things related to mindset and in pursuing success and you know, developing as a person as an individual, so I'm reading something the other day. And it said that the reason and this is an exact quote, but summarizing, the reason that you may not be reaching the goals that you want or achieving what you want is you simply haven't been clear into the universe as to what it is you're trying to do. So again, when you put things out into the world, and it's a little bit of that whole concept of manifesting, whether you believe in it or not, you know, you put something out into the world, the universe has a way of putting opportunities in front of you to help you get there because your brain is naturally looking for evidence of what you're trying to accomplish. So if you're being unclear, or you're wishy washy, or you're uncertain, well, yeah, you may not be getting what you want, because you just don't know exactly what you actually want. And what that is. So that one for me, it was a little bit of a gut punch, like, Oh my gosh, like, if there's a reason out there to get clear on what you want to accomplish. There you go. You know, if you're not clear, how the heck is the world supposed to kind of conspire to make it happen for you. So I think that's a good food for thought to really embrace. So top three takeaways, Bryan, you did not tell me about changing the block time, from thinking time to believing time, and I think that is so stinking good. That is one of the best things I've actually heard. So I am going to personally do that as well. I think creating and blocking out whether you call it thinking or you call it believing time, it doesn't matter. But I think that's powerful. So I think that's the first takeaway from today is that if you can just put that on your calendar, and here's the thing, you don't have to block hours on end, if you simply start with like 15 minutes a week, and you just do a jam session of you know, writing, like, like Bryan said, journaling, writing down thoughts, you know, just sitting there, maybe in quiet and peace, go for a walk, you know, sometimes they say, getting out in nature, and actually getting a little vitamin D and letting the fresh air hit your face can actually be a time where you're most creative. So whatever that looks like or means for you just put it on your calendar and commit to it. Second takeaway would be defining what success actually means to you. You know, if you don't get it out into the world, you're not clear on what you want, it makes it really tough for the people out there that could potentially make it happen to really understand what it is you're trying to accomplish. So again, define what success means and put that why behind it. You know, again, like I mentioned in the last episode, you want to really fall in love with the why and the what, not the how. So don't get hung up if what you really want in life seems unrealistic, or seems out of reach, or people are telling you that you're a big dreamer, and it's never gonna happen or whatever, that stuff doesn't matter. You don't need to know how you just need to know what you want, and you need to put it out into the universe. And then the third takeaway would be, you know, I think there's something to be said about surprising yourself with the success that you achieve. And I think it ties into what Bryan talked about with those kind of 90 day sprints, and looking back on the progress that you make. And like I kind of tied in with that, setting those targets, setting those goals, because it's important to have them, you shouldn't not have them because you want something to aim at. But then throwing that out the window and enjoying the journey. And just measuring that progress towards that bigger target, instead of falling prone to beating yourself up for not being exactly where you, you wanted to be when you wanted to be there. And I think I would add a step to that by saying, I think sometimes, when we don't hit a certain target that we've set, it may mean that we actually have the wrong target set in the first place. So maybe instead of focusing on where's that next check coming from and that next big revenue driver, yes, it's important. And that's how you grow. And that's how you add more capabilities and employ more people and serve clients and all of that good stuff. But if you're hung up on that, maybe that's not the thing you should be focusing on. Maybe what you should have actually been focusing on is enhancing your experience or creating opportunity for your team or whatever it is. But I think that just surprising yourself with the different levels of success that you achieve, and really taking the time to look at how far you've come. And really what you've overcome in life. So anything else Bryan, anything that I missed in that that you think we should add? Or you want to just add comment to?

Bryan Sweet  29:19

No, it's it's just been absolutely enjoyable chatting on at night. I just wish everyone the ability to try this and experience the results but just do it consistently. It's not like, Oh, I wrote something down and I had a 15 minute thinking or believing time and and you know, tomorrow everything comes true. It's training your mind over time. And it absolutely will make a difference but you have to do your part to make it work.

Brittany Anderson  29:53

So good. Well, that wraps up not only today's episode, but also the mini series on creating opportunity. Regardless of your demographics, so again, to reiterate, it doesn't matter where you are doesn't matter how much competition you have locally, doesn't matter what you need on your team, or what capabilities and technology are all of those great things that tend to come with running and growing a business. What matters is what you believe, and what matters is what you define as success. So that wraps up today's episode of your ultimate advisor podcast. We will catch you right back here in the next jam session. 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