1) Did you consider what your office says about you and your success?
2) Did you re-model or re-decorate?
3) Is it important that clients feel comfortable?
4) Is a nice, professional office important to building and maintaining professional relationships or will any type office do?
5) And if your office is professional and inviting, would it make sense for you to greet your cleints wearing a track suit?

While branding is not easy to measure, if even possible – it it easy to see that it is absolutely critical. Branding is you, your image, your value, your uniqueness and most importantly, what people remember about you.

A well articulated and nurtured brand will help people quantify who you are, what you do best and the difference working with you made it their life and business. How can you build a business without this level of identification and communication? You can, you’re just making it much more diffuclt fgor yourself and your company.

Here’s a generic example first and we’ll apply it to financial services a bit later on. Think about toothpaste. Its basic function is to clean teeth. Pretty boring stuff right? NOT! Through our ever increasing need for choices, toothpaste’s purpose has expanded over the years to: prevent cavities, freshen breath, whiten teeth, desensitize to heat and cold, brighten smiles and even heighten sexual prowess.

You can walk into most department stores and be faced with an entire mind-numbing isle of selection on shapes, sizes, flavors from this list: Aim, Aquafresh, Arm & Hammer, Colgate, Crest, Darlie, Doramad, Elmex, Euthymol, Gleem, Ipana, Kolynos, Lion, Mentadent, Oral-B, Pepsodent, Sensodyne, Signal, Sozodont, Stomatol, Therabreath, Tom’s of Maine, Ultra Brite, Zendium.

That’s just toothpaste. Imaging being sent to the store for toothpaste, salad dressing and cereal. Essentially, you would be faced with more than 2,000 choices. And, the choices are getting bigger every day.

The common misconception is that choices make things better, they free us up and we are more satisfied as a result. In truth, the exact opposite happens.
Here is what selection and choice does: (Start thinking of these in terms of your practice.)

1. Too many choices can create paralysis to the point of no decision being made at all. Or, more specifically, the decision to make no choice and simply put the decision off. It has been shown repeatedly that when the anxiety and risk of making the wrong decision exceeds possible benefit, then the go-forward decision is simply postponed to tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow and eventually the decision never happens.
2. When faced with a variety of choices, after a decision is made, people are more easily dissatisfied with their choice. This is because it is easy to imagine the benefits and rewards we might have achieved had we picked something else. Buyer’s remorse or regret are more prevalent when there are a multitude of choices and the most minor malfunction, or lack of performance is quickly compared to the utopia that would have been provided through a different decision.
3. Given hundreds or even thousands of choices for a product or service, our expectations increase significantly when it comes to the rewards of our decision. We believe that surely, with so many choices and options, the decision we make will meet our exact need. In reality, that is rarely the case. Our expectations increase in proportion to the number of choices we have and as a result, the product or service rarely meets our excessively high expectations.
4. We blame ourselves for bad decisions. Surely, with all the choices out there, there is a product or service that is perfect for us. As suppliers push decisions onto consumers, the consumers take ownership for “betting on the wrong horse.” As a result we are even less satisfied with our decisions and even more reluctant to make a decision the next time.
   

   So what does all mean to people in the financial services industry — an industry where clients have access to an almost infinite array of choices?

   You need to balance your client’s need to be informed and be part of the decision with their need to feel comfortable with the decision to the point of not even thinking about it again after the decision is made.

   There is really only one way to do that. With full disclosure in mind, inform them in the simplest terms possible and help them make the decision. Take ownership for the decision whenever possible and keep them informed as to the results. The more work you do in assisting the decision, the less work they will be compelled to do and the happier they will be in both the short and long term.

   Reducing choice to increase satisfaction, retention and even referrals seems counter intuitive. Speaking of choices; simplifying decisions for your clients is a choice only you can make.

DO YOU HAVE THE RIGHT MAKEOVER MINDSET?

Making over your business is not for everyone, especially those who are timid or complacent. If you’re okay to continue doing what you’ve always done and getting what you’ve always gotten, you can stop reading right now. This article will not interest you or serve you. But, if you truly want to make a lasting change in your business, this article will be that wake-up-call you’ve been waiting for. It will challenge you and point you in the right direction.

A makeover should mean more than just dusting-off and tweaking what could be.  It should mean “If I could do this all over again the right way, what would I do?”

For most people, starting over can be exciting at best and intimidating at worst. It’s all a question of perspective.  To achieve greater results, by an order of magnitude, means taking risks and being passionate about the rewards.   It also means going through a mental makeover before the physical makeover starts. One thing is very clear, if you want to move forward to bigger and better, getting more of things you want and doing less of the things you don’t want, a positive mental attitude is the only answer that will serve you.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson

A Makeover Mindset (MM) is how we describe the frame of mind of someone who knows with clarity and certainty that the thinking that got them to where they are today is not the thinking that is needed to take them to the next level of success and happiness. MM is the “aha” moment when you know for certain that you need to STOP dusting-off and tweaking.  MM is only achieved when the understanding is clear that something very different needs to happen.  Something big.  Something worthy of being called a makeover.  Unfortunately,  “aha” moments are often fleeting inspirations for most of us unless there is focused and sustainable action.

A MM can only be achieved when there is a realization, a revelation if you will, that there is a third “M” – Madness.  Madness is the depletion of energy and expenditure of time and resources on repeating the same thing we’ve always done to just maintain the status quo.  Madness is working harder and longer just to maintain your current success – your plateau.   Most every successful business owner and entrepreneur has gone through long hours and heavy lifting, working hard and diligently to achieve that success. The Madness is continuing to do those same things just to maintain the current level.

It’s worth spending a moment on inspiration.  At some point, most successful business owners have been caught in a moment of inspiration to make a huge change, and yet, nothing came from it? Think about a great book you may have read where you were consumed by the storyline and potential, feeling like change was necessary and paramount.  Then what happened?  Many entrepreneurs sleep on it, consider it and move on to “more pressing matters”, the “day to day”.  The fleeting infatuation with MM ends and the Madness lives on.  To escape it, you need to seize the moment and take directed action.

In my career I’ve had many “aha” moments, many of which I’ve not been able to embrace and sustain. It’s a deflating experience when your next “aha” is that you haven’t been able to sustain the greatest “moments” for change in your business and your life.  I’m speaking from experience.

But I finally understand it, how to escape the Madness forever and never look back. It’s been one heck of a journey. The quest for magic solutions for achieving extraordinary success is a tiring, expensive journey. It’s a road paved with promises and compromises. Although there have been exhilarating moments, I wish I could have done it differently. Although I’ve gained incredible insights from my failures I’d much rather have know how to do it right many years ago.

I WANT TO SHARE THE FORMULA FOR SUCCESS WITH YOU

Success is about vision, focus, awareness, accountability, starting and quitting. Yes, I said quitting. Quitting the right things will free you to pursue only that which drives you towards achieving your vision.

Here’s my challenge to all of you who are either immersed in the Madness or have flirting relationships with the “aha” moment that will catapult you. Here’s the juice!

Define your Vision.  Then, quit anything or everything that doesn’t clearly move you in that direction. Embrace highly focused activities and your greatest leverage points. Seek new thinking. Take action. Begin with the end in mind. Find the right partners to help you focus and hold you accountable. Build momentum every day, every week, every month, and every year until your vision of success becomes your reality.

TAKING ACTION IS A DECISION ONLY YOU CAN MAKE.

Here’s what starting looks like:

1. Take the free SuQu Mindscan Assessment. Understand your thinking strengths, leverage points and areas for improvement. Take the MindScan at www.freedomarketing.com/MS.
2. Find a coach and/or mentor to help you find a sustainable mindset and someone to hold you accountable. We’ve worked with some amazing business coaches and tactical referral coaches who we’d be happy to introduce you to.
3. Create a SuQu Map with your business coach. Begin with the end in mind and work backwards so you know exactly what is needed to move towards success. Focus on sustainable momentum. The coaches we know will guide you through the SuQu process.
4. Make sure you have the right partners to help you build systems and processes, define your message (brand), identify your ideal client, develop your marketing, and generate an endless flow of ideal prospects through introductions.

If you need helping putting this all into perspective call me at (905) 579-7724. I’d be delighted to talk this through with you. But don’t call until you’ve taken the Mindscan.

Here’s to YOUR LIFE – BEYOND THE MADNESS!

Risk is a must-read for those who operate in the financial and insurance industries who wish to avoid becoming the target of client complaints, regulatory investigations, litigation proceedings, and damaging press releases. Author Ellen Bessner has created an easy-to-read guide for advisors and dealers that offers tips on withstanding the scrutiny of regulators, trial judges, the press and the investigating public.

In her work, Bessner takes an in-depth look at and assessment of risks to advisors, and provides protective strategies for the investment and insurance industries to employ. Advisor at Risk will empower these industries with a new way to secure their business. Bessner stresses the importance of understanding clients and managing their expectations while developing a solid paper trail so that evidence can be corroborated with the necessary proof to render them credible should a dispute emerge.

Although written by one of Canada’s foremost authorities on the subject, Advisor at Risk is not a legal text peppered with abstract legalese. Bessner writes with a clarity and humour that makes Advisor at Risk an engaging and accessible read from start to finish.

Members of the financial and insurance industries need be proactive in identifying their risks and managing their business in order to protect their reputation, license and livelihood. Advisor at Risk is the ideal guide for taking control of risk and securing good business.

Too Many Focuses

If you are like most people, you have either forgotten or never realized that things like voicemail, email, skype, PDAs (Personal digital assistant) , even facebook, linkedin and twitter are tools for your convenience and efficiency; not the other way around. Somehow they have crept in to your life without you even being aware of how to really leverage them for your productivity and efficiency. Each of those is a tool in the physical environment within which you work or operate. The trick is to learn how to set up your physical environment as well as the tools themselves to serve you.

You want to learn how to respond to the alerts and information contained in those tools rather than react to them

I use the following formula: Set Intentions – Pay Attention – Feel Less Tension.

First – Create a daily “Ta-Da” list in addition to your ongoing To-Do list. (Set your Intentions) Become very clear on what your goals or key objectives are for the day. Determine what 3-6 action items you want to make sure you get accomplished by the end of the day in order to feel productive. These are usually tied to a larger goal , project or mission. Get clear on what you can affect today toward the achievement of the bigger objective. Visualize what your experience will be at the end of the day having accomplished those action items successfully.

Second – Create a Not-To-Do List. (Pay Attention) It is just as important to recognize what the distractions or obstacles to achieving those action items will look like when they show up. They are usually cleverly disguised as emergencies or ultra urgent items. Here is the news flash – they come in the form of email, voicemail, and flawed or outdated to do lists in PDAs. Essentially a distraction or obstacle is any interruption to our productive work flow. Typically these could have easily been avoided with some prior planning. Take a few minutes each morning to identify what the potential distractions may look like before they come hurling at you. This will enable you to be able to limit, eliminate or at least recognize them when they show up and not experience such an emotional charge around them. You’ll see them as distractions and step aside and let them go by you versus making the mistake of trying to square up and tackle it on the spot. This will free up your bandwidth to stay focused on what must be done to move toward success.

Third – Notice Your Wins. (Feel Less Tension) Somewhere between diapers and getting our business cards printed we forgot the art of celebrating our wins. We became too cool for school and conditioned ourselves to notice all the stuff we don’t do well or could have done better instead of all the stuff we are doing well. I am here to challenge you to start noticing and yes, even celebrating your wins throughout your day. You will feel better about yourself and what you are doing. When you feel better you act better and when you act better you get better results. It’s an upward spiral. The better it gets, the better it gets. This is experiencing less tension. Imagine what you could actually accomplish if you experienced no stress. It’s a lot better than the downward spiral most people operate within that winds them so tight they eventually snap or blow a tube. So, to start with, just notice then when you are ready celebrate.

Make it up, make it fun, make it happen!

A well articulated vision based on ones values an goals is an absolute must to achieve long term success. Most successful business owners obtain the benefit of counsel in developing, articulating and pursuing their vision. It’s a significant step towards achieving focus in their business and their life. It’s also the first major objective of a good coach.

2. Challenge Your Potential

Coaching is a safe place for a person to begin to understand how to accept themselves, challenge themselves and leverage their potential. It’s a place where dreams, desires and hopes rise to the surface. Effective coaching creates an environment for stretching the boundaries with honest and realistic assessment of a person’s potential.

3. Work-Life Balance

Some people live to work however the majority work to live. A good coach will help a person find their natural work-life balance. This will add energy to both life and work and, as a result, attract success. Achieving the proper balance will reduce the effort is takes to get things done.

4. Uncover Your Sweetspot

A good coach can ignite clients to pinpoint their natural sweetspot and facilitate a plan to help them spend most of their time working where they are most passionate, adept and profitable.

5. Sustainable Execution

To achieve long term success it is imperative that visions, values and goals are aligned with sustainable implementation? The best plans are the ones that are masterfully executed. The best executions are the ones that are repeatable and sustainable.

6. Professional Accountability

A key ingredient for a successful coaching relationship is for the person to be accountable for the things that they say they will do. An effective coach will ensure there are no judgements, disappointments or guilt trips laid on the client in the event of non-action while at the same time ensuring the client understands their accountabilities and the results of their actions or inactions. The person must let the coach know what was accomplished from one coaching session to the next.

7. Eliminate the Energy Drains

Most people have items in your work and life that they wish were not there but that they tolerate because the items are not a big enough deal with or make issues with. Examples might be: a cluttered desk, poor time mgmt or people invading their space or time. Coaches use special resources early in the relationship to systematically eliminate things their clients tolerate that corrupt their environment.

8. Prevent Relapse

When people do not get the support they need to build their business, things get postponed and they might not ever get done. Coaching accountability is meant to prevent relapse when environments distract or influence less productive behaviour. A good coach will help clients stay or get back on track. This is one of the key reasons that an ongoing relationship with a coach is important. There will be times when everything is great and it feels like not much help is needed but when an unexpected challenge mounts, a coach could be the difference that keeps things from derailing.

9. Learn How to Mentor

Many clients benefit so much from their coaching sessions that they, in turn, learn how to better help others. For people whom this comes naturally to, this may add some value that differentiates them and helps them have more success with people. The tools and skills coaches use can be used in many areas of life, both personal and business. An effective mentoring relationship creates an awareness of oneself and others around you. You can choose how you want to leverage these tools and techniques.

Below are some excerpts that will give you some idea of what the times ahead may be like and the mindset that will be required to prosper.

BE PREPARED FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE

If you haven’t noticed, companies who are surviving, or better yet prospering during these turbulent times are companies who are lighter on their feet. They can change gears, move quickly and adapt. It’s not about being able to predict, it’s about being prepared when the unpredictable happens.

“It is only in times like these that you get a chance to show your strength. In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It’s our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it. And I believe we will. I don’t believe the world will treat us well, but we will figure out how to do very well.” – Jim Collins.

As a financial advisor…

• Did you plan for possibility of a market crash?
• Did you prepare your clients emotionally for this?
• Did you have a plan to communicate quickly and effectively with your clients?
• Did you have your clients real risk tolerance accounted for in their portfolios?
• Were you or are you gearing up to move to fee-based advice rather than sales commissions – the future model for financial advising?

IT’S NOT ALWAYS WHAT WE DO, IT’S WHAT WE GIVE UP

“You need a laserlike focus on doing first things first. And that means having a ferocious understanding of what you are not going to do.” – Jim Collins

Most of us have heard the wisdom, “do not put all of your eggs in one basket”. But let’s be honest, just how many baskets can you manage and just how many eggs can you juggle? If your goal is to be successful, wouldn’t you need to put all of your eggs in one basket. We’re not trying to balance an investment portfolio here. I highly recommend finding a professional consultant or coach to guide you to what works best given your strengths (that which you are most passionate about, good at and is most profitable) and your ideal audience (clients who are fun to work with, have similar values, are profitable and easy to access). Now there is a basket worth putting your eggs in!

JIM COLLIN’S EVOLUTION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TELLS A GREAT STORY

Have you ever thought of just how powerful your passion, vision and values are to growing your business and creating a culture around the relationships you have with your clients?

As you read the Jim Collin’s view on the evolution of entrepreneurship it will become clear that your values, passion and vision are all that truly differentiate you from your competitors. It’s why people work with you, they like what you stand for. And often times, it’s because they stand for exactly the same thing.

People do business with you because they relate to what you do, why you do it and what that means to them. Growing your business is about helping your clients understand what your business and you are all about — it is not simply marketing and selling what you do.

Jim Collins defines the evolution of entrepreneurship as follows:

I. Easier access to capital mechanisms including venture funds, angel networks, private equity and search funds

II. The idea that entrepreneurship is a learnable process

III. The entrepreneur itself has turned from a bad word into a good word

IV. A big shift away from seeing the essence of entrepreneurship as the creation of a better mousetrap to viewing it as the development of a better process

V. We’ve gone from the traditional THREE stages of entrepreneurship to the FOUR stages of entrepreneurship.

1. In Stage One entrepreneurship, you have a great idea. That’s fairly primitive, but it’s what people thought about entrepreneurship in 1979.
2. Next, we went into Stage Two, in which you build a successful business.
3. Then, in the 1990s, we got to the next stage: building a great company. That is different, because a great company will have, over time, many successful businesses. I think that may be why Built to Last spoke to entrepreneurs. It was about the company as the ultimate creation.
4. And now, I’m thinking we might be on the cusp of a Stage Four. I’m putting a big question mark next to it, but I think we might be in a stage of going from a great company to a great movement. A movement. Something bigger than the company.

IDEA –> SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS –> GREAT COMPANY –> MOVEMENT

THE NEXT MOVE IS YOURS

Challenge yourself to build your company based on your passion, your values and your vision. Put that out there for your clients and see just how powerful you and your business become. Start building a movement in your community, marketplace and industry.

Click HERE to read “Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009″

Branding re-defined

Now that you are scratching your head, let me explain. There is a general misconception about the very definition of “Brand”. The Dictionary of Business and Management defines a brand as: “a name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of sellers and to differentiate them from goods of competitors.” Wikipedia defines brand as “a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme.” We believe these to be classic but dated definitions.

The meaning of “Brand” has evolved significantly over the last decade or so to mean much more than a logo, symbol or design. Brand has evolved to represent your company in a much more holistic view. Today, your brand means the message you deliver. Brand is about the overall customer experience. Taking that point one step further; your brand is not what you say you are, your brand is what your clients say you are. Your brand is the reputation you build with your clients and potential clients on every contact; whether that contact be direct or indirect, intentional or unintentional.

Here is an example that many of you may associate with. Vonage, a leading supplier of broadband telephone service, position themselves as feature rich, easy to do business with and cost effective. That is what they say they are… that is their brand. On the other hand, the Better Business Bureau reports 8,155 complaints about this company in the last 36 months with the majority being billing, service and refund issues. Firstly, consider what percentage of actual complaints get escalated formally with the Better Business Bureau, then, to the question of brand, ask yourself what a Vonage client is likely saying about them. Although Vonage’s marketing and logo and graphics are exceptional, how strong is their brand?

The question of ROI

Instead of asking to define ROI on branding expenditures, we should reframe the question and ask how branding affects the value of a business. The answer to that question is simple. Branding represents the value of your business. Your value proposition is your brand. Brand is a multiplier that contributes to your balance sheet positively if your brand is positive, and negatively if your brand is negative. The stronger your brand resonates with your target clients as being unique and valuable, the larger the multiplier on your bottom line. Unfortunately, as with the above example, the converse is also true as Vonage continues unnecessarily to operate at a loss.

Exceptional logos, images and tag lines should be considered as investments in infrastructure. On their own, they produce no return on investment. They can help position awareness and intention but they alone do not create sales or retain clients. That is why there is no ROI on the creation of these.

For instance, a dozen firms of roughly the same size with roughly the same service offering could spend $20,000 on branding and each achieve significantly different results.

The result they achieve will depend on:

• their awareness of their business priorities,
• their business plan and marketing strategy,
• their ability to solidify action plans,
• their ability to track, report and implement,
• and lastly, the “multiplier” of their brand.

Here is another key point. A branding exercise never ends. Branding is not a project or a one-time campaign. Branding enables and supports current and future business capabilities. Your brand message needs to resonate at every touch point – from what the piece looks like to the tone of the message to the exuberance or professionalism of your service people to the service offering itself.

For the beancounters:

If you started reading this article in the hopes of finding a worksheet to help you build a business case around the return on a specific branding initiative, I apologise if I’ve misled you. Here is a bit of help for the analytical reader. Consider Branding expenditures as expenditures in infrastructure as you would for technology. The technology, in and of itself will not add value to the bottom line. It is the implementation of the technology into current or future processes that will produce value.

For example: if you intent to spend $15,000 to “re-brand” your business, include the costs or integrating that brand into the heart of you business. That means including the cost of integrating the brand message in your organization in a long-term sustainable way. That might (and probably should) include changing the way you do things. For the sake of keeping the numbers simple, let’s assume that is another $15,000. Only then, can you estimate the impact of the exercise. Building a business case on the hard costs of “branding” alone is a sure way to have nothing to measure and as a result a sure way to fail. On the other hand, when you build the branding exercise in an integrated, sustainable and long term implementation, the returns should reproduce themselves year after year with no additional cost. The returns will have become part of who you are and how you do business. You will reap the rewards through ongoing differentiated value you add to your target clients.

One final note:

Brand is like trust. Think of trust as a bucket that you fill for your ideal clients one drop at a time. At every touch point, you add another drop of trust. The trust bucket can take 10 to 15 years to completely fill. We all know that this same trust bucket takes only a moment, one incident, to spill. The same is true for your brand. Build it slowly and consistently, drop by drop. Eliminate everything from your organization that conflicts with your brand – less you risk spilling the bucket.