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Is "the grind" as outdated as the Boomers that came up with the saying?
Advisors are always excited to tell me, "Hey, I have a practice that is just like yours and Matts'!"
Whenever I hear this, I ask myself, "Ok, let's see if that statement is true?" and within a few short minutes, I discover that no, they don't have a practice like mine or my business partner, Matthew Jarvis.
These advisors may have some similar attributes to our planning practices. But they're not delivering massive value to their clients, or spending more time outside of the office with the people that they love while maintaining high profitability.
They have not put in the grind to get where we are and do not have the success that we do.
They do not have the momentum in their practice that comes from spending years daring to do the work no one else was willing to do.
When I meet with advisors who have fewer than 10 years in the planning profession, they tell me about their goals and how they want to become millionaires and spend more time out of the office having a lifestyle practice. What they do not tell me is how they plan to work to get there. They do not mention the word "work" at all. That is the key missing component: work!
When I first started in financial planning, tenured advisors referred to this as the grind. Their advice and mentorship was simple: Do the grind and put your time doing the work that no one else is willing to do.
If this is invoking images of someone slaving away at their desk and never spending a waking moment outside the office, let's dispel that right now and change the way that you're thinking of the grind.
One neglected aspect of the grind is the time that financial advisors should spend content learning.
How much time are you spending on mastering your craft?
Not just listening to content, but mastering your content and becoming an expert in particular areas of study? Here is an example of how I become an expert in my financial planning niche, Federal Employees.
When I began my practice focused on serving federal employees, I started reading the Office of Personnel Management handbook – riveting, huh? I didn't just read it once; I read it repeatedly until I knew the benefits inside and out. I read the handbook until I could quote the booklet; until I learned how to flip to a chapter and walk a human resources person through how the benefits worked.
Many advisors have clients who are federal employees. Every year I get phone calls from advisors asking me how the benefits work in a particular case, and my response is always, "What does the OPM benefits booklet say?"
The question is met with dead silence. Of course, they have not read the booklet. After all, who reads the benefits booklet?
I do! I have the responsibility to my clients to provide them with the best financial advice on their benefits as possible. If a client has a problem with their benefits, I base my argument with the OPM on the booklet. I had better have put in the time mastering my content and doing what other advisors are unwilling to.
Sure, that is a specific niche, but what if you have a broader niche, or you think you don't have a niche at all?
How many hours have you spent around a crackling fire, a hot cup of coffee, and the tax code laid out before you?
Is this how you want to spend your time camping? Understandable. That is what most people feel and think too. That is the average opinion from average advisors.
If you're an advisor who doesn't want to be ordinary, you have to be willing to commit to doing the extraordinary. You have to listen to that voice inside of you, that one of defiance that says that you will not be average and that you will not be the same as everyone else. Instead, you will do what it takes to be the best and know that the easy way, the pathway to mediocrity, will always be there – a wide, warm, well-lit, and comfortable path ready at any time for you to walk down. They probably serve hot chocolate along the way, too but not cookies. Cookies are for closers.
When it comes to mastering your craft, you should be blocking time on your calendar for all aspects of learning how to become an expert in your field. Think about what your prospect and client meetings will feel like when you have spent the time and energy to become a master of the value you're trying to deliver to each client.
When you're starting your career, be as strategic about planning your time becoming an expert in your craft as you were studying to get your licensing and designations. It would help if you were carving out time to learn, absorb and educate yourself so proficiently on a topic that you become the voice of authority on the subject.
What is each day but a series of choices for you to decide what and who you want to be: mediocre or great? The choice is and always will be yours.
I chose greatness and was willing to do the grind to get there. Are you?
Micah Shilanski, CFP®, is a financial planner who achieves the ‘impossible’. Micah is recognized as a leader in the concept of lifestyle design for financial planners and has spoken at conferences across the country. Micah is an advisor with Shilanski & Associates, a founder of Plan Your Federal Retirement, and a co-founder of The Perfect RIA.
Read more articles by Micah Shilanski