Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

Sometimes my job coaching female financial advisors makes me sad.  So many women I start working with are bright, very successful with great production but come to me as if they have been faking their success, as if they don’t deserve it.  Their confidence is low, they are often exhausted and have lost their drive and spunk. Yet In just my first hour of coaching I can already see their strength as an advisor, their uniqueness as a woman and the amazing value they bring to their clients, to me it’s clear as day.

These are the clients I enjoy the most, they have so much to work with they just need someone (me) to help them see who they are as a female financial advisor.  My role is to encourage them to embrace their difference and recognize it not as a deficit in a stodgy industry but a breath of fresh air in a business struggling with ethics and trust.

It’s so easy to focus on the things we are not doing always recognizing what didn’t work, what hasn’t been done, this is a recipe for disaster especially for a woman.  We women are different creatures and must recognize that we must manage ourselves as much as we manage our clients.  The tables often turn within the first few coaching calls while I would like to think I’m the solution it’s really the simple exercises I ask the women to start doing on a regular basis and it often starts with your vision.

Create Your Vision: You have heard this a million times but do you have one?  I mean a fun, lofty vision?  Vision boards are a great way to clarify and reinforce the life and business you want.  I have one and so should YOU.

1.        Purchase a foam board from Staples, I prefer poster size
2.       Gather together a pile of magazines that you can pull from
3.       Turn on some great motivational music and grab a glass of wine if you are so inclined. (This is always fun to do with other women)
4.       Begin by cutting out pictures that reflect the life you want (remember dream big).
5.       Paste your pictures on your board, be creative or not.
6.       Post this board where you will see it every day

As a woman it’s natural to be humble, we have been taught from an early age not to talk about ourselves yet our male counterparts are quite competent about talking about their strengths and the value they can provide.  Women must learn that there is a difference between promoting vs boasting.
As a female financial advisor your prospects and clients must feel confident in your ability to manage their wealth.  They must feel and hear your confidence in order to build trust and commit to doing business with you.
While women are great at building relationships with clients and prospects many struggle to convert that “Like” to business.  Yes it’s important that prospects and clients “Like” you but what’s more important is that they gain the confidence that you are serious about managing money. They must know that you have the ability to make important and often tough decisions with their money.
As a female financial advisor if you are getting in front of a lot of people but are not closing enough business or perhaps your closing business but never getting the big assets odds are they “like” you but don’t feel confident in your skills as a money manager.
Your job as a female financial advisor is NOT to be everyone’s friend; your job is to convince clients and prospects that your first and most important priority is making smart decisions with their money. If you’re not closing enough business or struggle to get all the assets learn how to turn off the likeability and infuse more promote-ability into your presentation skills.

I have grown to LOVE internal conflict because I know what is on the other side – BIG GROWTH.

This past week I coached two female advisors who were experiencing that same internal frustration.  While in many cases the angst seemed to come from outside sources, I recognize that the real source is within you.

My client Ann is always so energized, her business is on a strong upward trajectory and she is excited about her future.  She has been asked to speak to a number of women’s group acting as a role model and example of success. She volunteers to train other advisors in her branch and truly has a desire to see everyone succeed.  While I appreciate this team attitude I have been trying to get her to focus more on her business and less on everyone else’s success, I may have gotten my wish.

Recently there have been a number of incidences within her work environment that has hurt her feelings, made her angry, caused her tremendous stress.  She has lost some of her mojo and feels like avoiding her business which is so unlike her. These negative feelings are so contrary to her nature they are creating even greater internal conflict.  She is angry because she sees others changing and not appreciating her loyalty and contribution.

While she sees the source of the issues coming from others I see the source as coming from within her, she is about to make a HUGE shift in her business that will be way more productive, yet she keeps hanging on to her old scripts and model as the way things should be done.  I let her vent and when she was finished I told her the problem isn’t them it is YOU.

When you work closely with others we all develop a dance,  we step together and sway together, we all know the steps you step this way and I know your going to step that way, it becomes very comfortable and we all seem comfortable with the progress.  BUT when someone decides they want to change the dance steps it can quickly frustrate those around you.

You know it‘s time to change, your ready to make a positive shift in your business, recognizing a new approach or replacing old habits and behaviors to new ones that will take you and your business to a higher place.  This is when you are changing the dance steps.  YOU are no longer acting or behaving the way you always have (you are growing!) but to others it’s as if you changed the dance step on them.  They really want you to come back to the old step because as you change everything feels out of synch.  It may get so uncomfortable for them (depending on how much they want to stay in their comfort zone) that your relationship may change all together.

The conflicts and challenges you are experiencing now are just GROWING PAINS.

Yep you heard me! You are changing and that is a great thing, it may mean your relationships with friends and colleagues change but perhaps, given time and your ability to change and grow you will become an inspiration to them.  Instead of feeling hurt realize they are in fear of losing who you were, instead of feeling anger understand that their behavior is driven by fear, fear of change.  As you experience these new feelings release yourself of any expectations and relish in the fact that YOU are on your way to success you never dreamed possible.

But know that the old dance routine is gone, over. But remember you are a part of others comfort zone so when you change everyone else is no longer in synch with you.  This makes them angry which can alter the relationship.

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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!