Welcome to a special episode of Soundbites, brought to you by Investment Executive and sponsored by Canada Life. This week we continue our series with Chris Reynolds. Chris is the co-founder and executive chairman with Investment Planning Counsel. He’s well known in the Canadian financial management industry as host of the Turning the Page podcast, and he’s the author of The Six Circle Strategy: The Entrepreneur’s Journey to Wealth and Freedom. Today we’re looking at the third circle: Focus. We talk about developing a growth mindset, outsourcing non-essential tasks, and we started with the importance of beating back complexity.
Chris Reynolds (CR): In the wealth management business, we love complexity. And you really have to sit and think about, why do we like complexity so much in this business? And I’ll tell you why: complexity feels like sophistication. If we offer more products, more planning modules, have more meetings, have more tools, more seems better. But in fact, it’s the complete opposite. Complexity creates the illusion of progress. We think if we make something more complex, we’re moving forward. But if you really think about it, what it does is it hides things. It hides indecision. It makes accountability really fuzzy. It distracts advisors from the activities that actually drive the client outcomes and business growth. Busy is not the same as results. Focus takes courage, because it forces trade offs. If you want to be highly, highly focused, it means you’re not throwing everything at the wall and seeing what works. If you look at the problems that most people have running a wealth management business, 100% of those problems come from complexity, not the lack of it.
Learning what not to focus on
CR: Saying no to distractions is a good thing. That allows you say yes to the things that really, really matter, that are really important to your business and to your clients. If you have focus, the really important projects get done. More and more I talk to advisors, and I’m like, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’ Or, ‘Why aren’t you doing that?’ Number one answer? No time. But you have no time because your business is too complex. If you want better service for your clients and fewer errors, focus. The most efficient businesses I know are focused proactively on the things where you can really create value. For advisors, focus is not restrictive. It’s actually liberating.
Chasing two rabbits
CR: I had a business coach for years and years and years — an executive coach — constantly reminding me that the dog that chases two rabbits goes hungry. In other words, you can only have one strategic priority. Trying to have two strategic priorities means you’re not going to get anything done. And from a business point of view, what happens when you have divided focus? What happens when you’re chasing two rabbits? You’re going to have mediocre client outcomes. Really good advisors out there are incredibly focused and have the best client outcomes that there are.
Developing a growth mindset
CR: A fixed mindset is, ‘My skills and my decisions are static and so any mistake I make is going to be dangerous to the business.’ So, I’d rather continue to do what I’ve always done, than innovate and move forward.’ That’s the fixed mindset. The growth mindset is, ‘I want to constantly learn, adjust and improve, and mistakes are the data.’ In other words, I’m very much the, ‘Let’s do it, learn it, fix it, and move on.’ In fact, the whole reason that I use the circle analogy is because business is all about starting something, failing, learning from that failure, readjusting and starting again. And if you think of all progress as a circle, that’s a way better way to go about business. And the growth mindset supports focus, because now you’re not paralyzed by picking the perfect option. Progress becomes your journey, not your scorecard. In other words, you learn from the things you’re doing as opposed to, again, speculating about what might or might not work. Focus is way easier when perfection isn’t the goal, but growth is the goal.
Outsourcing non-essential tasks
CR: Outsourcing is really getting rid of what I call the non-essentials. The more things that you can get other people to do for you, the more you are able to focus your time on the incredibly important thing. What outsourcing does is it gives sort of operational drag. It’s cognitive overload, right? Your team can only be good at so many things. Outsource it to other teams who are good at it. It dramatically decreases your cost. But the big reason you outsource is it gets rid of distractions. You don’t have to be good at everything. You only have to be good at a few things. And if you can get rid of all of those things you’re not good at, then you can spend all your energy on the things that really create value for your clients.
And finally, what’s the key away on focusing your business?
CR: Focus is a professional discipline. It is what separates the great from the not so great. It’s not a natural tendency. Focus is not something human beings do well on their own. You have to do fewer things, do them better than anyone else, finish what you start, and if you can just do those three things, you will build a trusted brand of consistency, of delivery and of expertise.
Well, those are today’s Soundbites, brought to you by Investment Executive and powered by Canada Life. Special thanks to Chris Reynolds of Investment Planning Counsel. He’ll be back soon to walk us through another circle in his Six Circle Strategy. In the meantime, you can get more insights from Chris at his “Turning the Page” podcast site. You can even schedule a ‘virtual coffee with Chris’ to discuss issues specific to your practice. You’ll find that at IPCC.ca/Turning-The-Page-podcast. Join us again next week for another episode of Soundbites. Thanks for listening.
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