Thursday, March 21, 2013

5 Ways to Act Like an Entrepreneur


Every financial advisor needs to act like an entrepreneur. It doesn't matter whether you are a self-employed business owner who coordinates all of your firm's moving parts yourself, or you're an employee at an organization with a huge infrastructure. Either way, you've got to manage your business wisely so that you can create long-term success.

Of course, doing so is one of the biggest challenges any advisor will face. My friend Michael Gerber, author of the bestselling book The E-Myth, recently summed it up nicely for me: People who go into business to do work they know how to do often make a fatal assumption - that because they know how to do that work, they therefore know how to build a business that does that work.

But that's simply not the case. In many instances, advisors spend so much time working in their practices - dealing with the day-to-day minutiae - that they have no time to do what great entrepreneurs must do: work on their businesses to create great enterprises with lots of value.

This is one reason why, when we conduct focus groups with advisors, they typically report these kinds of problems:

*We're working harder, but not seeing bigger results.

*We have a good revenue stream, but we're not profitable enough.

*We're not on the same page as our partners.

*We can't seem to execute as a team.

It's hardly surprising that nearly 40% of RIAs surveyed last year by my firm, CEG Worldwide, said they were not highly satisfied with their level of success.

With that in mind, here are some ideas Gerber and I came up with to unlock your inner entrepreneur and make sure you give the same level of care and consideration to your business you give to your clients.

1. CREATE OPPORTUNITIES