How To Run Your Business So Your Business Doesn’t Run You

The following is adapted from Freedom Street.

We all know those financial advisors who seem frenzied and a little bit overworked, and, on the flip side, we know some who are cool, calm, collected, and growing their business.

What’s the “cool guy’s” secret? It’s likely they’ve set up systems so they’re running their business, not letting their business run them. You can’t be truly free while you’re letting your business run you—instead of anticipating and planning, you’re reactive and drained.

But no matter how far along you are in this business, there’s always room to change. You might be drowning in paperwork, regulations, and chaos, but over time, you can fix whatever’s broken. In this article, I’ll talk about how to start. By setting up systems in time management, day-to-day processes, scalability, and compliance, you’ll see the kinks in your business smooth out, and you’ll start to live a truly rich and balanced life filled with love and the things you enjoy.

How Freedom Street Helped Hank

But first, an anecdote and success story. A financial advisor we helped, Hank (not his real name), was overworked and worried about the future. We showed him how to streamline his work and delegate to his team, and we directed him to revisit every client relationship, individually, to reevaluate their risk and set up an updated investment policy statement for each one, using our tools. The way he managed their financial lives was about to change.

One year later, Hank turned his practice around. He started to execute on our investment management best practices, utilized our marketing and branding suggestions, offered client events, and leveraged our innovative client relationship management system. He also brought on full-time staff to make the most of the new systems. Working with our team was a catalyst for big changes not only in Hank’s professional life, but also in his personal life.

He had more time to attend his kids’ soccer games or take trips with his girlfriend and not worry about things falling apart. He exuded positivity and a can-do attitude, and his old concerns went away. A few years later Hank crossed over $1 million a year in production. His business’s valuation nearly quadrupled, and he built a brand-new office in the town square. Hank went from letting his business run his life, to truly running his business.

It’s clear that Hank is not only enjoying more freedom—he’s living rich.

Setting Up Systems To Streamline Your Work 

You might be thinking, “That sounds great for Hank, but the nature of my work is so unpredictable, I’d be crazy to try to systemize it.” Well, you can’t create predictability in your clients’ lives, but you can create it on the backend so you have something to rely on to balance the chaos. Systems around time, processes, scalability, and compliance help you control what you can control, and offset the inherent inconsistencies of your work. 

#1: Time

At the start of my career, I was more of a fireman than an advisor. I allowed everyone and everything else to dictate my schedule.  Once I realized what I was doing to myself, I began setting boundaries that allowed me to take back control of my time and decide how to invest it to best serve people.

Think about time management in terms of rocks, pebbles, and sand. The rocks are the most important tasks: your priorities. The sand is distractions, minutiae, and things that can wait, like social media or answering text messages. If you fill your jar with sand, you’ll have no room left over for the rocks. But if you put the rocks in first, you can fill in the gaps with sand.

To use this method, you need to get straight on what your priorities are—and also those things you love. Through the years of failing forward and revealing what I love to do, I’ve built my role around those activities I enjoy most: leadership, mentoring, coaching, recruiting, and being the visionary. As the CEO of a company, I know where my blind spots are, too, and I have people to fill them. We’re all much happier that way, and the business is better off for it.

#2: Processes

If you do something every day, week, or month—or with any degree of regularity—the task will go faster and be easier with a process stating when you do it, why you do it, and how you do it.

Even having a goal for every call or email will take you a lot further than winging it. For example, have you thought about a process for connecting with your clients, including how often you call them, and the desired outcome? Have an agenda and a schedule before you hit the dial button. 

Once you have your processes for all your activities in place, schedule them on a calendar so you’re doing them at regular intervals. On my calendar, for example, we complete three scheduled connection cycles a year related to three major factors for our clients: income needs/goals, risk, and performance. We have a minimum of two town halls every year to answer questions and address concerns in a larger forum and several client events to connect socially.

Advisors often put off process-building until later in their careers; that’s a mistake. It wastes a ton of time unnecessarily. You can start creating processes immediately.

Begin every client relationship with the mindset that you’ll be that person’s advisor forever. View each one as a long-term relationship deserving of consistency, no matter how many more clients you take on or how busy you get. The only way you will accomplish this task is with repeatable processes that you use every day and can pass on years from now.

#3: Scalability

Scaling your business is about taking on more of the right clients: replicating your best relationships and producing more, while minimizing additional work. If it takes a certain number of hours to produce a particular amount, scaling allows you to double that without doubling your hours. For me, hiring the right people was an essential part of scaling—I never could have done it on my own. 

But that shouldn’t make you shy away from scaling your business. Think about it like this: People are often fearful of doing something they’ve never done. Once they’ve accomplished something new, they don’t realize they can do the same thing at a much higher level.

It’s like the difference between swimming in a pool, swimming in a lake, and swimming in the ocean. No matter how big the body of water, you’re still just swimming. Creating a scalable business allows you to advance from the pool to the ocean with less effort.

Instituting processes in your business frees you from a lot of work and a lot of worry, so you can scale effortlessly. Advisors who don’t have processes aren’t enjoying how they spend their time, and they aren’t delivering the level of service their clients deserve.

You can’t properly deliver if you’re not energized, organized, and methodical in your practices. Building a business that scales will get you there and put more money in your pocket.

#4: Compliance

In this industry, playing by the rules and doing the right thing is mandatory regardless of who you work for. If you’re at one of the larger firms, the company has people in place to ensure compliance. If you’re an independent advisor or in the RIA channel, depending on your affiliation, that responsibility could be all yours.

Delivering compliance accurately and consistently, no matter how big your business gets, is crucial. Take ownership of compliance, wherever you work. It’s your responsibility to your clients, the business, and to your team.

Know When To Ask For Help

Circling back to Hank’s story, he used our advice and tools in all four of these categories. When he created processes, his time was freed up,  both in his personal and professional life. He was able to make more money putting in more focused time, and his original fears around new regulatory laws and compliance issues lessened significantly.

Think about your priorities (your “rocks”) and get out of the sandbox. Make processes out of your day-to-day activities, and do it soon, because it will save you time in the long run and you’ll be able to scale more quickly. The very first step to running your business—and not letting it run you—is taking a look at how you manage these things, and getting them under control (with the help of a coach or consultant like us, if need be). True financial freedom awaits.

For more advice on running your business more efficiently, you can find Freedom Street on Amazon.

Scott Danner is the CEO of Freedom Street Partners, a practice that supports financial advisors in their next career step and helps them explore all available paths to secure a fulfilling future. After fifteen years practicing on an employee platform, Scott founded Freedom Street and took it from $0 to $2 billion in assets under management in just five years. Scott is the co-founder of the Chesapeake Virginia Wine Festival and enjoys traveling the country with his wife to watch their two sons play soccer.