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– Happy Wednesday everybody. So I’ve been talking with many advisors and business owners lately who seem completely exhausted and overwhelmed and are articulating things like, “I just need to get through the end of the week or the end of the month, or a quarter, or get to the end of this year.” And so my title for today’s Wednesday wisdom is five game changing tweaks to your week. I wanna give those folks, if you’re listening and watching, some tips on how to better manage your week and your activity and your calendars. And these are not just best practices that are gonna be helpful for the rest of the quarter but you can really adopt them as part of your thinking process and an operating structure into next year and forever. So the first thing I’m gonna say, and this is in line with many of the other Wednesday wisdoms I give and have given, give yourself permission to not take on any more new business through year end. I know, and shocking right? Like that’s the complete opposite from what you’ve been told probably your entire career. But folks, what I want to reiterate for you is that, if you commit to not taking on any new business, if you tell yourself, you know what, that goal that I set for this year for the practice just seems really unattainable and I don’t have it in me to try to go out and gather X million and new assets or bring on X number of more households in the fourth quarter, nothing is going to happen. You’re going to wake up January 1st, you’re still gonna exist, your business is still gonna operate, you’re still gonna have relationships with clients that are incredible, and you’re still gonna have changed so many lives because of the work that you did and continue to do for clients. And so giving yourself permission to protect, not only your mental space, protect your business and protect the current client relationships you already have is incredibly important. Going into a week and telling your team, or going into this next week and saying, “you know what, every person that comes in as a prospect, we’re gonna tell them that, me as a senior advisor, I’m not taking on any new business until January 1st.” Number one, I don’t know why people think that’s such a terrible thing to say. Imagine looking for a really good general practitioner or, you know, a really good insert the name of another professional and having that professional’s team tell you, “you know what, we would absolutely love to work with you, we want you to be part of our community, we’re gonna include you on our newsletter or you gonna get our Wednesday wisdoms, but we’re actually not taking on new clients until January. This has been a chaotic year and we’re really doubling down on solidifying the plans for the families we work with or whatever the language is.” Folks, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. And in fact, it creates this sort of air of exclusivity and an importance from a marketing perspective that could actually work in your favor until you get the staff or an infrastructure or mental capacity to be able to do that. I talk a lot about the need to redefine success and redefine what goals we are actually looking to attain in our practice because the goals, the success metrics, the belief systems that we hang on to are outdated, and are not in line with, I think, the businesses that many of you want to build. Awesome, well constructed lifestyle practices or ensembles where you’re able to powerfully serve clients but also have time to engage in hobbies and spend time with your family and do the things that you love philanthropically. So give yourself permission to not take on any new business. The second thing I’ll say, so the second tweak to the way you think and run your week. If a decision is glaringly obvious, I don’t know if glaringly is a word, but let’s assume it is. If the decision is completely obvious, in other words, you’ve implemented all the technology, you have systematized as much as you can, your marketing, people are bringing in referrals, but you guys are still at capacity and you know you need to hire somebody else. And you’re at the point right now where you realize, “okay the only thing holding this back is me and my fear.” Outsource and delegate that decision to somebody else. I will tell you that it is, unequivocally by the way, well worth spending money and allocating money to create, again, mental space for yourself and take away the stress and anxiety of having to make a big decision like going out to look for a new administrative hire. And so either hiring and outsourcing that to somebody or allowing somebody on your team to carry the ball forward and say, “you know what, I know we need to do this, I can’t do it. We need to post but I’m overwhelmed on the thought of looking at resumes, could you take this on for me? Or maybe I’m gonna go outside and hire somebody.” Absolutely a good decision. So each and every week, look for areas in which you can either invest money to create brain space for yourself or outsource to somebody on your team. The third thing, be protective of your time. And here’s what I would recommend, and this is truly game changing, I speak from experience. Commit to only taking on client meetings on specific days and times of the week. Tuesdays through Thursdays, nine, 12, three o’clock. If a client, somebody doesn’t fit into that space, great, we move them to the next week. But everybody becoming a client or who is a client knows that professional formal reviews, in other words, the engagements where you need to prepare and have stuff filled out and look at stuff beforehand, those should be done only at specific days and times of the week. On that note as well, once the week starts, commit to not taking on or adding any appointments to your week once Monday has started. So if you’re in the week and somebody wants to meet with you or somebody wants to talk to you, fantastic, we love you, we wanna talk to you next week. Especially if it’s a prospect meeting by the way, a little bit different if it’s an A plus client calling in. But at any new meetings, meetings with wholesalers or, you know, whatever extraneous people, that’s moved to the following week, if you’re already in the week. The other thing I’d say about protecting your time is to use the rest of the quarter, start week by week, literally implementing systems as you go. What I mean by that is, let’s say you have a review meeting with a client this week and one of your main problems is that just activity is all over the place and things are being done ad hoc and you just feel completely overwhelmed. Once you finish that meeting with that client, set context with the client but then pass them off to your admin or your executive assistant and have him or her set up the next three meetings with that client. So if you do quarterly touchpoints and annual reviews, great. Your assistant should have tasks set up for you and for him or her in your system for the next three touchpoints including the annual review that’s gonna take place the following year. The client should know, hey, just FYI, here’s when our review is gonna be, I know we’re setting it really far in advance, but we wanna get it on the calendar. Those three touchpoint notifications are already in the system ready to go so that you don’t have to think again about, “gosh, how do I know when to call that client next, and what do I do?” The last thing I’ll say on this front is, there’s a bigger difference between setting tasks in a CRM and actually implementing workflows. I talked to so many advisors who use CRM systems, and don’t feel any capacity lift or scale as a result. And if you don’t feel relief from implementing a CRM as it relates to scheduling and time, you’re not using and optimizing the CRM. Assigning tasks is no different than sending an email and asking somebody to do something. And so what I would recommend is reach out to the CRM provider or reach out to a firm like RIA Oasis, shout out to Kristen Schmidt, and have somebody set up workflows for you. Really really good use of your time and money. Okay, so those were my tips and my tweaks, I hope that was helpful. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone, take a deep breath and we’ll get through it. Okay, I will talk to you next week, same place same time, take care.