Archive for the ‘Female Centric Business’ Category

I can understand why women struggle to rise and succeed in the corporate world but why the number for female financial advisors is struggling is beyond me.  Women in the corporate world must learn to play the game by the man’s rules.  While female financial advisors do not have to play by these strict guidelines they constantly act like they do.
As a female financial advisor the only person you need to be accountable to is yourself. The only thing that determines your success is your numbers, bring in the clients, raise the assets generate the production and you answer to no one (excluding compliance) but yourself.  So if it’s that simple why are women struggling?
Learning how to do what is important vs what others want you to do is key in developing a successful practice.  Women tend to carry many other responsibilities as a wife, mother even daughter.  These responsibilities add additional demands on their time and energy as a result women must often squeeze more into one single day than their male counterparts.
Woman must learn to say NO, say NO to company meetings, say NO to training that sounds good but may add little value to your business, and say NO to the next wholesaler that calls to talk.  When there is something that you need in your business set it up, make it happen but if you do not know specifically what you will learn from a particular event, meeting or training …DON’T GO.  Your time is very valuable, be sure that the time you spend can have a direct impact on solving a problem, adding to a particular aspect of your business.  Remember, your time and energy is a highly valuable commodity don’t give it away freely.

Last night my husband and I were talking about the principles we want our kids to focus on. They are now all young adults from ages 19 – 24 and all venturing into a new phase in their life. This was not an easy discussion as we constantly allowed our emotions to impact our thoughts but after about 2 hours our discussion became quite fruitful. We realized we want all our children living a Healthy independent life, being fiscally responsible while always growing and improving. I won’t bore you with the details, but what I love about having these principles is that it makes it easier for us to make decisions. If one of our children needs our help we can now consider how they are living these principles which will reinforce our decision.

Your business is no different, as a female financial advisor it’s so easy to get caught up in the emotions of your business, your minds can easily block out the realities in lieu of what you want to see or do. While you may not select principles to grow your business, having a vision driven by your Mission can provide that same structure and guidelines when making a business decision.

In my business, Your Pink Office, my mission is to inspire female financial advisors to better leverage their strengths to accomplish more. To help them recognize their unique differences and have the courage to trust their instincts and follow their heart. With this in mind every decision I make, every investment I make into my business must fit within my mission. I can even look backwards and ask myself in 2011 how did I accomplish my mission? What are the measurable achievements that inspired women?

Whether you are trying to raise responsible productive children or building a highly profitable business having a clearly defined vision and mission is a critical component to staying focused, objective and more successful in both your business and personal life.

Ready to start 2012 with a new vision but you don’t know where to start? Breakthrough Coaching designed to jump-start your business with a personalized, high-intensity, one-hour session that gets you out of your rut and back onto the road to success.

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I have a friend, a female financial advisor who makes success seem so easy.  She is always smiling, she works through issues with a smile on her face and her production keeps going up.  As a young new advisor I would watch her trying to emulate all the systems and processes that she incorporated into her business.  But what I have learned through my years coaching female financial advisors is that it’s not the systems that make the business it’s the ATTITUDE.

It’s not the tools and resources that makes this woman so successful it’s something so simple you often don’t even recognize it.  Her ATTITUDE drives everything she does and every decision she makes. She is an example of the Law of Attraction.  This past week in a coaching call with one of my female advisor clients we spent a whole hour focused on her attitude.  When I say attitude I’m not talking about walking in with a happy face (as that happy face can often be covering up major internal conflict) I’m talking about a whole new way of approaching everything in your life.

Years ago in the early stages of my business when the bulk of my contact list was Smith Barney clients and managers, I sent out an email titled “Do I Stay or Do I Go” .  At the time there was a lot of firm hopping going on.  The intent of my email was to help the advisors really look at their situation and not be swayed by the big check. I talked about how often you are just swapping one problem for another and the stress that comes when you switch firms is incredibly challenging (as most of you can attest to).  In my own independent objective manner I was hoping to quell the amount of advisors moving. That’s not how Smith Barney saw this email. Next thing you know there are managers deleting their names from my distribution list.  An advisor and friend finally shared with me what happened and why, I was shocked. My intent was so good how could they take it as if I was a “traitor”.

I held on to this experience along with a few other not so positive occurrences. It became a led weight making me sad and at times angry and while I loved my work there seemed to be a dark cloud over my head until I met my coaches Cheryl and Teresia.  I learned that the experience was only an experience, that as long as I perceived that experience as a negative it would continue to hold me back from achieving the success I wanted. A negative thought is like putting a ball and chain around your ankle as you try climbing the mountain.  My coaches helped me to see (what my husband had been telling me for a year) that it was time to move away from my comfort zone (still working the Smith Barney contacts) and begin broadening my source of new business.  While I continued to “punish” or “chastise” myself for this incident they taught me that these experiences are only detour signs on the path to success.  That they are not bad or wrong experiences but present themselves in order to help us take the direction that we are better suited for.

Today, any negative experience I realize is a gift from God, I know it is an opportunity to learn something about myself or my business that I would never have voluntarily addressed on my own.  As we learn to reframe these experiences we turn what could have been a ball in chain into an instant propulsion moving you forward faster with less effort.

As you talk with your friends, colleagues, associates even clients and you encounter those people who always feel carefree and positive about their business with a business that backs them up, notice their attitude, recognize how they handle what seems like negative situations and begin incorporating your own process for converting what hurts or angers you into a blessing that will drive you forward.

As Zig Ziglar always said You Attitude Determines your Altitude!