Master these 5 Skills to Move from Financial Advisor to CEO of Your Advisory Firm

DEAR ADVISORS,

We are trained in giving financial advice, but not in running a business. Ask yourself “Do I want to be a Financial Advisor or a Business Owner?” If you want to be a financial advisor, then you need to hire someone who has business management skills. This could be a coach, office manager, or CEO, depending on the size of your firm. If you want to be a business owner, you need to master these 5 business strategy skills to move from the role of financial advisor to CEO in your new firm. 

1. Master Knowing Yourself

   • Don’t wait for a crisis to look for clues about the most important person in your business: You. Regularly ask yourself tough questions until you recognize your blind spots, what drives you, and who you want to be. Clarify your purpose. If you’re going to succeed, your role as CEO must align with your personal identity. One way to do this is to take this free Personal Identity Audit. 

2. Master the Ability to Reason

   • Your ability to process issues, especially during a crisis, will define the future of your company. The most important trait to processing effectively is taking 100% responsibility for anything that doesn’t work out. As the CEO, you need to see yourself as the one who’s ultimately responsible for creating the issue AND the one who has the power to solve it. 

   • When making improvements to your business, analyze the Investment, Time, and Return across several scenarios. What is the worst thing that could happen? Are you okay with that? When solving problems in your business, be sure to identify the true cause. Identify reasons why it happened so you can make effective decisions to resolve the problem and not a symptom of the problem.

3. Master Building the Right Team

   • Establish your values and principles - both for your business and as an individual. Communicate your business principles into everything you do in your business, both for yourself and your team. This will make it easy to identify the types of team members you want to attract and create the right value proposition to retain them. As you become successful, be even more selective about who you let in your inner circle.

   • Document processes and procedures for every skill needed in each department of your business to make it transferable to any new hire. Knowing you can rely on your team allows you to work more efficiently together. Trust = Speed. Communicate your expectations clearly, early, and often. Then hold yourself and your team accountable to the expectations you communicated.

4. Master Strategy to Scale

   • Decide how you’re going to capitalize your business. Execute strategies for both exponential and linear growth. 

   • Make momentum your friend, but be prepared for chaos! Create strategies to increase the speed of growth without crashing your business. Look for ways to compress time frames. Keep your ego in check to avoid temptations and being your own worst enemy.

   • Design systems to track your business. Identify the most important data and formulas of your business and track them religiously. 

   • Constantly put yourself in your enemies’ shoes. How would you put yourself out of business if you were them? Don’t take it personally when they try to do just that.

5. Master Power Plays

   • Identify the next Goliath for your company to go after. Create a strategy to control the narrative. Minimize distractions and anything that stands in the way of your beating Goliath.

   • Train your sales team to sell with conviction and feeling. As Zig Ziglar said, “Have an absolute and total belief that what you’re selling is worth more than the price you ask for it. Your belief in your product should be so great that you ought to be using it.”

   • Instead of thinking only about what’s in it for you, think about how to find wins for your strategic partners. Lastly, value people so deeply that you are constantly looking to see what drives them and how you can help steer them based on their motivations.

If you’re interested in learning more, read the book called Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy by Patrick Bet-David. Understanding the next five moves in your business will move you from the role of Advisor to CEO to secure the future of your advisory firm!

Warm regards,

Brooklyn

P.S.

At Ellevate Advisors, we believe that advisors deserve to retire too. What does that look like for you, your family, and your business? Let’s figure it out together! Click here to schedule an initial phone call or get to know me on my bio here!