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All high performers want to be better leaders. Everybody who is in a leadership role should, at the very least, want to be better every single day. Improving constantly is a trait that’s common among high performers. Each year, I focus on becoming a better leader. Over the years, I’ve tried various strategies to find out what works best.

The following four strategies are those that have led me to become a better leader. I have tested these approaches, failed at some of them and learned from all of them. See which ones resonate most with you.

1. Keep an open mind to learn and grow constantly

Lifelong learning is one habit that sets high performers apart from everyone else. Leaders are always curious about the world around them, and they pursue personal growth and learning with open minds.

Learning comes in many different forms. For me, it comes with reading. I read every day — articles about my profession, psychology, the economy, other cultures, trends among different generations, health — any topic. The more I read, the more of a well-rounded person and leader I become. Learning is crucial to becoming a better leader.

You can also learn by writing. Write down what matters to you — your principles and your values — and then focus on them.

• Read more — Set a goal to read for a certain amount of time every day. Chances are, you’ll enjoy learning so much that you’ll soon be reading for much longer than you originally intended.
• Write more — Try writing as a way to learn more about yourself. Write down and share your best practices and lessons learned with those around you. Write about your successes and how you achieved them. Write about your failures and what you’ve learned from them.

“Commit yourself to lifelong learning. The most valuable
asset you’ll ever have is your mind and what you put into it.”

-Brian Tracy

2. Get comfortable with imperfection

Perfection isn’t possible for any human, so pursuing it is a waste of time and energy. Perfection isn’t possible in leadership or in parenting. If you are a parent, you know how easy it is to look back and think, “I should have done that differently.” But parents lead their children into adulthood through trial and error, just as leaders inspire their teams to success.

When you lead, you have to become comfortable with imperfection. Why? Because being imperfect just means you’re taking the initiative to become better. Sometimes your plans work out, and sometimes they don’t. Expecting perfection from yourself and others will only lead to disappointment. Disappointed leaders are bad leaders, upset leaders, emotional leaders.

For me, becoming a better leader meant getting comfortable with being imperfect every single day. I am as imperfect as one can be. Imperfection is a key ingredient in the recipe for success.

• Strive for excellence. Let go of the unrealistic goal of perfection.
• Do you tend to be a perfectionist? In what ways does your goal for perfection slow you down, dampen your curiosity and limit your ability to learn new skills and knowledge?

“A person who never made a mistake
never tried anything new.”

-Albert Einstein

3. Empower people instead of asserting power over them

Many people equate leadership with power. But power is overrated. I want people to want to make the right decisions on their own. I don’t want to force them to make certain decisions. Now, I do some of the things in my career a certain way because of compliance requirements. In those areas, I have no choice. Rules are there for a reason, so I acknowledge them and follow them.

But often, a power-hungry manager (I can’t call that type of person a “leader”) demands that people do things a certain way — just because he or she is the boss. Maybe you have encountered people like that in your work. People tend to resist doing what they’re told to do when there is no obvious purpose for it except to stroke someone’s ego.

A 2023 study published in Harvard Business Review revealed that teams ruled by overbearing leaders who issue commands don’t generate the innovative, creative thinking that is the lifeblood of companies. I can tell you this is true, from my experience.

In a recent marketing meeting, our team was discussing our videos. We were talking about how we could showcase the best aspects of what we do by having people who are a part of our company become involved in getting the message out. This is very personal for us. We value each team member’s experience, and we believe we can help people learn from what we’re experiencing, teaching and sharing in our own journey. This is something we all get excited about.

As leaders, we could easily make people who work for us do things, but what’s the point in that? If an effort doesn’t resonate with someone, why should he or she have to do it and pretend to be all in? Why should your team members share something personal if they would prefer not to? What I’d rather do is form a committee of people who do care, who are interested in giving us topics and titles that matter to them. That’s what we decided to do as we create new videos.

Everyone has different interests. If you take the time to find out what they are, you will end up with a well-rounded team of people who bring unique perspectives from their interests and experiences to the table. Also, when people know you care about them as individuals, they will be more engaged in the process.

That’s not forcing a team to do something. That’s not using power to make someone do something. It’s taking a team approach — listening, learning from each other and bringing out the best in everyone.

This is something I had to learn over time; I didn’t always take this approach. When I first launched my business two decades ago, there were only five of us. I would say things like, “If all five of us do this, then we will accomplish our goal.” My team members at the time went along with it because of mutual love and respect, but it was still the wrong approach.

• Empower people to do their best. Refrain from pushing power on them.
• Learn more about your team members. Learn what each individual team member excels at and enjoys, and then give him or her opportunities to grow even more in those areas. Empower people to want to learn. Empower them to understand and empathize with why this is important to you and everybody you’re helping.
• Set specific goals for getting to know people better. What steps can you take to learn more about each of your team members (and your family members, fellow board members and others)? In what ways do you think learning more about their interests, talents and fears can enable you to lead them more effectively?

4. Build a culture of connection

It’s easy for high performers to get involved with a lot of projects and priorities all at once. When that happens, we typically aren’t connecting or engaging with any one of them.

As a leader, you must be in the moment with the people and projects we are focusing on. I believe it is mandatory for leaders to have a strong connection with the objects of their focus. For some leaders, this comes naturally; others have to work at it.

You need to be connected to your purpose and to the people in your work life and personal life. So, what does it mean to be connected? It means you care about people. You care about them as individuals, as humans, you care about what they are going through at work and outside of work. You care what they do, how they live, what they want to do, what they want to be when they grow up and what keeps them up at night. But also, you care what their dreams are, even if their dreams don’t involve you and your company or your family.

I have become a better leader in my company by having Monday-morning huddles and coffee conversations where we learn about everybody’s weekends. Every single week, I learn just a little bit more about everybody. We discuss our wins and challenges every single week. Those discussions help me understand what’s important, where someone’s struggling and why they’re struggling.

This might sound like a small thing, but done consistently, it builds a culture of connection. In our work spaces, we are all connected because we have a mutual task. But we need much more than that to become better leaders. We need to connect with every team member on a deeper level — not just because we’re all striving for the same outcome but because we are all humans striving for a sense of community and accomplishment.

Strengthening my connection with others is one of the most important aspects of my journey of becoming a better leader.

• Assess yourself. How connected do you tend to be when you are interacting with a team member? Are you in the moment, or is your attention scattered in many directions? If this is an area that could use improvement, practice being more connected.
• Assess your team members. How connected do your team members seem to be when interacting with one another? Bring up the importance of connection with them, and discuss how everyone could improve in this area.

Just about everybody wants success and everything that comes with it — especially high performers. We all define success differently, but in general, the more of a high performer you are, the more you do and the better you get at whatever you’re doing. Success comes from hard work, and hard work yields more success.

This is typically a rewarding journey; however, there is a trap that comes with being in that mode of creating, developing and seeking success — the “success trap.”

The success trap is something you don’t think about when you’re working toward a goal. You’re focusing on improving the quality for your family and others. As your success increases, you realize you can afford more of the things and experiences that make life more enjoyable. You can travel, help family members financially and take up hobbies. It’s a great feeling to move up in the world. But we can get so wrapped up in that process that we fail to notice when we’re neglecting our own well-being.

So, what are the obstacles that can block your progress on your journey toward success? Here are some of the major obstacles that characterize the success trap:

• Getting out of tune with what your mind, body and spirit need to remain healthy
• Trying to take advantage of so many opportunities that you exhaust yourself
• Helping people so much that you forget how to say “No”
• Becoming vulnerable to the “takers” around you who give nothing in return

The great news is that you can overcome all aspects of the success trap simply by being self-aware. Self-awareness is a key leadership trait.

McKinsey & Co. found that leaders who are self-aware — those who know themselves or are “centered” — are up to four times more effective in managing change than people who aren’t.

Now, just about everyone believes they’re self-aware, but few are. Researchers have found that only 10 to 15 percent of the people they studied actually fit the criteria of self-awareness. One way to increase self-awareness, the researchers noted, is to seek out feedback from loving critics — that is, people who have your best interests in mind and are willing to tell you the truth.

Here are four ways increasing your self-awareness can help you avoid the pitfalls of the success trap.

1. Be aware of what your mind, body and spirit need

First, your brain needs to be stimulated. This comes naturally for high performers. Self-awareness keeps your brain from becoming overstimulated.

Second, you must recognize signals from your body that tell you you’re doing too much. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met whose health declined as they became more and more successful. They were showing up every day, striving to be the best version of themselves, but they were so busy that they found it difficult to find the time to eat healthy food, exercise and take breaks to recharge their energy.

And third, your spirit is always working toward something bigger than yourself. When you lose sight of that, the other aspects of your life can suffer.

• Check in with yourself often — many times a day. What do you need more of? If you’re physically exhausted, for example, get more rest, build buffers into your schedule and delegate tasks to others.
• Remember my “LIFE Optimization” theory — that we live our best lives possible when we focus on LIFE — an acronym representing love, impact, faith and energy. When you focus on those four components of life, your success will follow.

2. Prioritize your goals to avoid taking on too much

As a high performer, your success inspires you to accomplish even more. The more success you experience, the more opportunity to make an impact seems to come your way. When you have a success mindset, you’re constantly coming up with creative ways to make an impact.

Sometimes it’s about investments. Sometimes it’s about new business opportunities. Other high performers see your success and want to partner with you. You start brainstorming with them and realize how much you could build together. But then you stop and tell yourself, “When am I going to have time to do that?!”

If you constantly follow that compulsion to start new projects over and over, you will eventually become exhausted. Being self-aware is critical because it helps you know what you can do and accept that you cannot do some things effectively. With self-awareness, you will know your limits before you burn yourself out doing too much.

• Realize that your time, energy and other resources are finite. Prioritize your goals. Focus on what’s most important right now.
• Pay close attention to what you love and who you love doing it with. Prioritize the people and the things you want to focus on.
• When considering a new project, assess how it fits into your life. Is it something you’ve always dreamed of doing? Is now the right time to pursue it? If not, you can keep it on your list for another time.

3. Set personal boundaries to avoid giving too much

Often, the opportunities to make an impact involve helping other people. Helping others is so rewarding that you begin to help even more people. Altruism is admirable; however, it can get out of control. You can end up helping others so much that it becomes overwhelming.

Self-awareness makes it easier for you to set boundaries and say “No” when helping someone else might overwhelm your own resources.

Years ago, I had a great friend who worked really hard at his job and often worked long shifts. He was handy and could fix anything. As a result, people were always asking him for help with home repairs. One time, he told me he was going to stop at his friend’s house to help him make some repairs in the bathroom. He was sure the job would take just a couple of hours. But the next thing you know, his friend wasn’t helping him at all — he was doing all the work and ended up remodeling the entire bathroom by himself — not just making repairs.

What started out as “helping a friend” became a major and time-consuming project. The friends ended up taking and taking and taking more. Maybe it didn’t start in that mode — but it ended there.

• Think about how you spend your time. How much of your time is devoted to helping others? Have any of your attempts to help others gotten out of control? If so, at what point in the process could you have set boundaries?
• The next time someone asks for help, think about how getting involved might deplete your time, energy and other resources that you need to apply to your own work or projects. Offer a specific, finite amount of help, and if the obligation starts to require more, remind the person you’re helping that you have provided the assistance you offered but that you cannot devote more time to the project.

4. Surround yourself with givers; distance yourself from takers

Nothing drains your mental, physical and spiritual energy more than dealing with “takers.” Those are the people who want a lot from you but offer nothing in return. This can be a huge trap. Some people know they’re taking, but others don’t realize they’re doing it. Self-awareness enables you to identify the takers and to take steps to minimize their negative impact on you.

We become vulnerable to the takers when we get so caught up in helping others that we forget to set boundaries that protect our own resources.

Now, sometimes you will give generously to someone you care about deeply, without expecting anything in return. Maybe you help your grandmother downsize into a condo, or you give your sister and her new husband money for a memorable honeymoon. That’s fine, as long as you are aware that this is a priority for you in giving to loved ones, and you don’t expect anything in return.

Self-awareness enables you to identify the takers — and stop them in their tracks — before they take advantage of your kindness and generosity. This is mandatory! If you don’t identify the takers early on, you will end up feeling trapped in a world where you hate what you do — even if it’s your unique ability and was once enjoyable.

You want to love what you do, and you are more likely to accomplish that when you are surrounded by givers. People who give to the world will give to you at least as much as you give to them. When you offer to help them remodel a bathroom, they will help you with three similar projects.

What I’ve found is that as more opportunities arise, the less self-aware we tend to be about maintaining our own mental, physical and spiritual well-being. When that happens, it becomes easier for takers to take advantage of us.

• Who do you surround yourself with? Are you surrounded by givers or takers? Distance yourself from the takers, and surround yourself with more givers; they will give you back more than you could ever provide to them.
• Cut the takers out of your life because they will consume you, like a fast-growing cancer.

________

Being self-aware requires that you exercise discipline to focus on your priorities, check in with yourself often and take care of yourself.

The key is to get better at navigating the course in front of you. Over time, you will get better at recognizing the obstacles and avoiding the traps that can come with success.

The biggest difference between high performers and everybody else is that they bring order to chaos — all the time. Life is chaotic, always changing. Those who cannot adapt get left behind. However, high performers don’t just adapt during the most tumultuous changes; they thrive while others are still trying to understand what’s happening.

High performers grow and learn through the chaotic days and years. They come up with innovative solutions that didn’t even exist before everything changed.

Order must come out of chaos. People who live in a constant state of chaos are usually just seconds away from a breakthrough when most people quit. Many people never become high performers because they get all the way up to the top, and right when they’re ready for a breakthrough, they quit because they haven’t figured out how to restore order to chaos.

So, how do high performers leverage chaos to improve even more? Here are six ways they do it.

1. High performers are comfortable with being uncomfortable

Order is comfortable to most people, while chaos tends to be uncomfortable. To become a high performer, you must be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

• Notice when you’re getting too comfortable, and change something. Comfort can be extremely dangerous; it can prevent you from doing the things you actually should be doing. On the other hand, being uncomfortable allows you to be flexible in life and seize new opportunities.
• Identify a goal that makes you uncomfortable, and strive to pursue it. What activities have you avoided in the past because they were out of your comfort zone? Start there.

2. They optimize their lives through love, impact, faith, and energy

I use the acronym LIFE to highlight what I believe are the four key components of a high-performance life: love, impact, faith, and energy. Focusing on these four elements sets the stage for you to live your best possible life. In fact, we designed our Life Optimization process to help people increase lifelong financial independence and freedom while reducing stress and enhancing their quality of life.

• Love is an extremely important part of a high performer’s life. It if the flagship, the reason why you work so hard. Who are the most important people in your life? Who do you love? Who are you going to put first, before everybody else? If you have a family, they are most likely the ones you will prioritize. Love is all about your relationships. It’s about friendships. It’s about the space that fills you up at a much higher level than anything else. The Beatles said it best: “All you need is love.”
• Impact is what you do that matters. What do you do every day? What do you make a living doing? Do you turn a profit doing it? What does your financial world look like? Does that financial freedom that you may or may not have allow you to make a bigger impact on the world? How are you making a daily impact?

Your impact is what allows you to not just leave a legacy, but to live a legacy. This requires that what you do is much more than just a job; it’s a career. It’s your calling. It’s your future. As an entrepreneur, you’re performing at the best of your ability and turning a profit while doing it. You’re making enough money to be able to do other things in your life well. You have to have space to do that because if your only focus in life is work, then you’re not living your best life possible.

• Faith is the component of your life that focuses on who or what is bigger than you. Faith and spirituality are key components to a high-performance life. This looks different for everyone. For me, spirituality is about God. It’s about building and developing a strong foundation on the teachings in the Bible.

When chaos ensued at different stages of my career, I strived to achieve peace in the midst of the chaos. That can be difficult because often, the source of chaos is beyond what we can control. It’s during those times that it benefited me to believe in something bigger than myself. Relying on my faith provides me with the capability to restore chaos to order in my own life much more easily and consistently.

In the rush to achieve and maintain high performance, many people leave faith out of the recipe. I’m not here to tell you what to believe or how to believe it, but what I can tell you is that when you believe in something bigger than yourself, and you use that as the foundation of your approach to life, it becomes much easier to manage the chaos around us. Believing in something bigger than us gives us the emotional and mental strength to focus on the other important aspects of our lives.

A lot of people are afraid to talk about faith. I’m not because I know the high-performance life cannot happen without it.

• Energy is the fourth crucial component of the high-performance life. It’s all about the how. How do you show up in the world? Energy has everything to do with your mind, your body, and your soul. We need energy to fuel the high-performance life.

When we think of energy, we typically associate it with our health. Having a healthy body and mind is foundational to being able to make order of the chaos regularly. We need energy to make an impact and to show up for those we love. If you have little energy, it will be difficult to be the best spouse, parent or friend.

Making our health a priority is the best way to boost our energy. This means making a conscious effort to eat well, exercise regularly, and check in with our health-care teams regularly. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an awakened awareness about how priceless our health is. LinkedIn posts declared, “Health is the new wealth.” And it is.

3. They set priorities

Every single day, the high-performance life is about setting goals and then prioritizing the actions that will help you reach those goals.

• Be ready to change your priorities. Once you set your priorities, don’t become too attached to them! In a world that’s often chaotic, elements around you will change, so your priorities will need to change as well. Be flexible and prepared to change your priorities to adapt to changing circumstances. Otherwise, you’ll be caught off-guard. Identify what’s most important right now. And then, if something happens that’s beyond your control, reprioritize.
• Every day, identify the things you must get done. What two or three actions will make you feel most grateful when you accomplish them? Which actions will move you forward the most? Each day, what are your priorities in terms of love, impact, faith, and energy?

4. They’re self-aware

It’s really important to know yourself — to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. Focus on your strengths. Practice, develop, and improve on them, and it’s amazing how easy the rest of the day can become.

• At all times, be keenly aware of your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. This information will guide you in prioritizing your actions and will help you navigate your priorities and reach your goals more easily.
• Know your weaknesses so you can delegate well. We’re all great at some things and not so great at others. High performers don’t waste their time and energy forcing themselves to do the tasks they don’t excel at and do not enjoy. Instead, delegate the tasks you don’t excel in to someone who does excel in those areas. That frees up your energy for the tasks you do excel in. And that increases your ability to make more of an impact.

5. They pivot easily

You’ve probably heard of “the power of the pivot.” One definition of pivot is “to adapt or improve by adjusting or modifying something (such as a product, service, or strategy).” Being able to pivot quickly and easily is crucial when you live in a chaotic world and constantly want to restore order to that chaos. Peace lies in pivots. It can be either a small but distinct change or a major shift.

• When your usual strategy is no longer working, it’s time to make a change. Pivots allow high performers to accelerate their success. Each pivot you make will allow you to achieve a better outcome.
• Remain agile because change will come at some point. High performers tend to have strong intuition that changes are coming. Some are so in tune with their environments that they can anticipate change and pivot before anyone else even realizes that something in the economy or society is shifting. How do they do that? The key is to know that the only constant is change. High performers know change is coming at some point, and they remain agile and ready to adapt and pivot.

6. They focus on financial freedom

High performers don’t let money rule them. They are not driven by chasing money — instead, they define their purpose and then pursue it in a way that enables them to achieve financial freedom. Along the way, they make wise financial decisions that make their money work for them.

• Define what financial freedom means to you. It’s extremely important for you to know what that looks like for you because that becomes your why — your reason for working so hard.
• Again, pursue the four components of LIFE — not money. If your relationships with those you love are stable and successful, your impact is far-reaching, your faith is strong and you have ample energy, then you will have the freedom and space to pursue what matters most. Pursuing money in and of itself will not equip you to perform at optimum levels in all areas of your live.

When you have financial freedom, you can live your best possible life. When you live free — whatever that means to you — you can restore order to a chaotic world.

How well do you make order from chaos? What pivots have you made during times of unprecedented change that benefited you? If a monumental change occurred tomorrow, how quickly and easily could you adapt? What pivots can you make right now, whether small or major, that can improve your outcome?

Tiny habits — small, positive changes you implement into your daily routine — can improve your life and make a huge impact on your mindset and productivity. Building positive, impactful habits is a hallmark of high performers.

In 2021, B.J. Fogg published an amazing book called Tiny Habits: The Habits That Change Everything. I love this book, and I think you could learn a lot from it, too. Fogg says people often fail to make changes in their lives because they attempt to accomplish too much at a time. The solution? “Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors.” He says he has “road-tested” this approach with more than 40,000 people during years of research and refinement, and it works.

Two years earlier, in 2019, James Clear published a wildly popular book titled Atomic Habits: an Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. Clear, a world-renowned expert on habit creation, says that too often, “We convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action,” but that improving by just 1 percent at a time “can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run.”

Clear says one reason we have trouble making lasting changes in our lives is because traditionally, research and guidance on habit formation have focused on how external stimuli, such as reward and punishment, affect our ability to form good habits and break bad ones. But he stresses that our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — our moods and emotions —- matter, too. Making small changes is easier than making significant changes, and when we feel good about them, we’ll be more likely to develop those changes into habits.

In my own journey, I have learned the power of small changes. The three tiny changes described below have made it much easier for me to build good habits and improve my life. I hope they will help you do the same!

1. Focus on one priority each day

As you prepare to start each day, ask yourself, “What’s the big thing for the day? If I get nothing else done today, what’s the one thing I have to prioritize?”

The more you have on your plate, the more important this habit becomes. When you have so many priorities in sight that there’s no way you can get them all done, it can feel overwhelming. You can feel defeated before you even get started! And that can diminish your motivation.

Your main priority for the day could be one meeting you need to have, one document you need to complete or one decision you need to make. It doesn’t matter what it is, but when you focus on just that one priority, it streamlines your approach to the day. It helps to write it down so you will see it.

I adopted this habit a while back, and it gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that, by the end of each day, I will have accomplished one really important task. I know that if I start the day trying to tackle many different priorities, it’s likely that I won’t finish any of them.

• This is a small but powerful habit that you can implement right now! It takes little time, energy, and effort.
• High performers typically have a lot going on, so our tendency is to think of a long list of priorities. But when we do that, it scatters our focus. This tiny habit — thinking of the one thing you can do during the day that will lead to a feeling of accomplishment — will make it easier to complete your other priorities as well.
• What is your biggest priority for today? Write it down, focus on it, and complete it! Then notice how good it feels to have a singular focus instead of a scattered one.

2. Read for at least 10 minutes each day

Learning new ideas, concepts, and strategies is so rewarding for me that I spend as much time reading as I can.

To build this habit, start with the goal of reading for a minimum of 10 minutes a day. Why 10 minutes? I recommend 10 minutes because it’s enough time for you to read a good article, a chapter in a book, or something else. This tiny habit can change your life!

When I began forming this habit, I set a goal of reading for 10 minutes each day. I was learning so much that my 10 minutes usually turned into 15 or 20 minutes. By starting small, I was able to build a habit that has become an incredibly important part of my life. Now I read articles, books, and other materials regularly.

One of the books I started reading at that time was The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John Maxwell. He says that to reach your potential, you must grow. “And to grow, you must be highly intentional about it.”

I started out being intentional about reading at least one chapter each morning, and that gave me time to think about what I had read all day.

• This habit takes little time, effort, and energy, yet it can create a big impact in your life. The reading you do during those 10 or more minutes could shape your entire day.
• Daily reading establishes the foundation for lifelong learning, which is foundational to becoming the best version of yourself.
• By now, you are probably aware of my focus on LIFE Optimization, with LIFE representing what I believe are the four critical components of our lives: love, impact, faith and energy. Being intentional about reading quality writing every day will help you achieve personal growth in each of these areas. Each of us can make a greater impact on the people and the world around us when these four critical components of our lives are our focus — and when they are in symmetry.

3. Create a habit of daily impact

The habit of daily impact is really important to me; I have written about it and talked about it a lot. I believe that most likely, you are already making a positive impact every single day but aren’t really acknowledging it.

This is another habit that takes little time, effort, and energy but can lift the collective mood and change the course of your day — and someone else’s day.

Once you begin building this habit, you’ll probably enjoy thinking of small acts of kindness that people will appreciate. Maybe you’re standing in line at the grocery store checkout, and you begin talking with the human next to you. Maybe you give them a small compliment, such as “I really love that shirt” or “Your nails look great.” Maybe you simply ask, “How’s your day going?” Or maybe you notice someone in your office doing a great job, and you tell them so.

Chances are, they will light up because they have gone through the entire day in a mundane fashion, with almost everybody ignoring them — but you didn’t. That can make a huge difference in someone’s life.

Focus enough on your own actions to know that the tiny things you’re doing really do matter. And when they make someone else feel great, you feel great as a result.

Once you build this habit, you will find yourself doing small acts of kindness throughout the day. Now you are making a positive impact on many different people each day. It doesn’t just improve your day or their day; it changes attitudes, emotions, and lives! The impact is immediate.

• What act of kindness can you do for somebody else today? What did you do yesterday that provided some level of impact to another human in some way?
• Showing someone else an act of kindness is one thing that can lift your own spirits when you’re feeling down.
• When you are exercising your habit of making a daily impact, be sure to notice it. Acknowledging it to yourself gives you a great opportunity to feel great about yourself. Your acts of kindness are not something you need to, or should, share with others. This is internal. It’s just for you.

“Too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile,
a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest
act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

—Leo Buscaglia

High performers thrive on being productive, yet no one feels motivated all the time. So how can you supercharge your productivity?

You can overcome a lack of motivation and be productive. Here are three strategies that work well for me.

1. Realize your impact to move from funk to focus

When we’re feeling unmotivated, we’re not focused on anything in particular; we’re just reacting to what happens to us. I have found that the trick to getting out of the funk and into focus is to determine the greatest impact you make in what you do every single day.

One of my clients is someone I admire, and she has become a close friend. One day, I was sharing with her all the things I was working on. She said to me, “Scott, I don’t think you understand how much your career and your daily job are your actual ministry.” I asked her what she meant by that. She replied, “You help people all day long. You’re making an impact all day long in people’s lives. If you break that down into an average appointment, how many times did you provide advice that might help somebody do something?”

It’s funny that what she told me is something I often tell others. But I had lost focus on that vital truth.

Helping others will always pull you out of any funk. When I focus on that, I’m always going to be the best version of myself. When you’re caught up in yourself, you’re never going to be the best version of yourself.

• Recognize the impact you make on others. Given your unique skills, experience, background, and education, you are doing something that impacts somebody else daily. What is it? How is it happening? In what area of your life is it happening?
• Remember my LIFE Optimization concept. The letters LIFE representing love, impact, faith, and energy.
• Make a habit of focusing on your daily impact. This way, you will intentionally do something kind for someone else, whether in your professional or personal life. Unmotivated people will find motivation through you and your acts of kindness. If you can remember that, it can be the kick-start you need to amp up your own motivation. This can mean simply holding the door for someone whose hands are full. It can be smiling at someone instead of just walking past them and ignoring them. Or maybe you pay for the coffee order of the person behind you.
• Focus on others. When you turn that mirror around and focus on what’s in front of you instead of on yourself, you are visualizing success. You are visualizing the recipe for a great day. And a great day starts on a positive note.

2. Rest and recharge

Many times, we lack motivation because we are worn out — physically, mentally, and/or emotionally. As high performers, we all experience this. I struggle with it all the time.

We need to, again, make a habit of building rest and downtime into our lives. When we are focusing on making an impact in other people’s lives, it’s easy to lose focus on caring for ourselves. But we must because we will not be much help to others if we’re exhausted.

Sometimes, when we lose motivation and we’re unable to feel productive, we just need to take a step back. Especially for high performers, this can be the opposite of what we think we should do. We push ourselves to hammer through the fatigue. But that is typically counterproductive. You have to know yourself really well. You have to know what your limits are and what your mind and body need to recharge. This looks different for everyone.

• Know who you are and what you need to recharge. Maybe you just need to take an hour to relax and think. Or maybe you need to go for a walk or a run. Or call someone special to chat for a few minutes. Or get away from the concrete jungle and out into nature.
• This can require that you reallocate the way you’ve planned your time for the day. So, what if you are feeling exhausted and unmotivated, but you have to meet an urgent deadline or prepare for a critical meeting? This is often a reality of the high-performance life. In some cases, it helps just to take some deep breaths. We often forget the power of taking a deep breath. We forget the value of a few moments of silence. Maybe you don’t have time to go for that run or drive out into the country right now. Plan it for later, and you can look forward to it. In the meantime, take just a few minutes to rest and recharge.
• Ask yourself, “Why am I run down? Is my brain tired, or is my body tired?” Even if you don’t have a lot of time right now to rest and recharge, you can feel better simply by taking deep breaths, stretching a little, and thinking about something that calms you.

If you make it a habit to build these small times of respite into your life regularly, you will be less likely to suffer from serious burnout or exhaustion.

3. Build rewards into your day and week

When you constantly work on major, long-term initiatives, it can be difficult to see the results of your hard work. This is another common cause of feeling lackluster and unmotivated.

Research shows that most people are enthusiastic about their projects at first, but they often “lose steam” in the middle. Creating shorter-term sub-goals on the way to meeting your longer-term goals can help. It also helps to keep a written record of your progress. That way, you can easily see how much you have accomplished instead of stressing about how much is left to do.

High performers tend to stay in a constant state of gap and gain. In October 2021, Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy published a great book called The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers’ Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success. The book is based on the work that legendary entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan has done with tens of thousands of successful entrepreneurs. These high performers tend to measure their progress according to an “ideal,” a moving target that is always out of reach. This is what the authors call “the gap,” and it typically leads to unhappiness. Instead, the authors recommend that we focus on the “gain,” which is the progress we’ve made in our own lives.

Sullivan reveals in the book that when his coaching clients take stock of all they’ve accomplished, both personally and professionally, they are often shocked at how much they have actually achieved. They weren’t able to appreciate their progress because no matter how much they were getting done, they were usually measuring themselves against their ideals or goals.

Throughout my career, I have found motivation by rewarding myself. For example, I would set goals for myself all week long, and if I accomplished them, I would take my wife out for a fancy dinner on Friday evening. That would be my weekly reward. I would also build daily rewards for myself. Maybe I would take time to sit down and enjoy a meal, even if it was a small one, and even if I was on a tight schedule. My reward would be that I would take a pause in the middle of the day if I get a certain number of tasks accomplished.

• Change the way you measure progress. Instead of measuring your progress against ambitious goals, measure how far you’ve come in the past month, quarter, year, five years, or more. This simple strategy can infuse you with a huge dose of motivation! Where were you in the past, where are you now? What does that gain look like? Visualize your success. Celebrate it! That should motivate you to make further progress.
• Complete a small task. What is a sub-goal of a bigger goal that you can finish soon, to feel a sense of accomplishment? Rewarding yourself helps you stay in the game. It helps you focus on your progress instead of on the work that’s still left to do.
• Don’t make it complicated! These rewards can be super-simple. Maybe you just need a small piece of dark chocolate after you finish a set of calls or finish a big meeting. Or maybe you need to reward yourself with a workout. Those are two separate ends of the spectrum, but both of them could be motivational rewards.

There are many significant benefits to reading. Not only can reading books reduce stress, enhance your conversations and help you sleep; it can even help you live longer and prevent cognitive decline. In fact, there’s even a form of mental-health therapy called bibliotherapy. It’s the therapeutic use of select reading material to alleviate many different mental health challenges.

You cannot reach your full human potential if you’re not reading. Reading enables you to grow and learn every single day. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not likely to ever reach the version of yourself that you’re trying to attain. So, not surprisingly, I consider reading to be an important aspect of the high-performance life.

I read every day and have done so for years. I typically learn something valuable from all the books I read, but four books really stand out for changing my life. These four books also align with my belief in the importance of four key components of the high-performance LIFE, with LIFE being an acronym that represents love, impact, faith, and energy.

I want to tell you about these four books because I think they can make a difference in your life, too.

L = Love: The Five Love Languages

Gary Chapman’s book The Five Love Languages, first published in 2015, has been a game changer in countless relationships. What I love about this book is it focuses not only on how you feel loved but also on what your partner needs to feel loved. Often, they are not the same. The five love languages Chapman discusses are words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and physical touch.

When my wife and I bought our first house, the couple we bought the house from gave us this book and encouraged us to read it. They said it would change our marriage and our lives. We were in our early twenties at the time and laughed about this when we got into our car to leave.

Fast-forward six years. By then, we had a three-year-old and a very colicky, fussy newborn. One day, when we were on the way to my wife’s cousin’s wedding in Northern Virginia, we were stuck in traffic. The windows were down, and the baby was screaming. I downloaded the audiobook so we could listen to it on the ride. We kept trying to find a pause amid everything that was going on to listen to it, but it just wasn’t happening. Finally, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “We need this book. Play this book!”

Do you know why we needed to listen to it? Because we were both loving each other, but we weren’t showing the love that we needed to in that stressful time in our lives. We listened to that book all the way up to Northern Virginia and all the way back. Sure enough, it helped us identify how we feel loved and how we show love. It’s something we refer back to in our lives often. It is a life-changing book. I’m still married, we have great children and that colicky kid is an awesome, healthy kid today.

• What is your love language? What is your significant other’s love language? If you don’t know, please read this book as soon as possible! How can you truly give one another what you really need and want if you don’t know this information?
• Once you know your S.O.’s love language, what are some specific gestures you can make to demonstrate how much you love that person?
• Take this a step further, and find out the love languages of other people who are important in your life — your parents, your siblings, your in-laws, your friends, etc.
• Chances are, your love language is different from your S.O.’s. You might appreciate acts of service, but your S.O. might appreciate gifts. Give according to his or her needs.

I = Impact: Think and Grow Rich

I think the timeless classic Think and Grow Rich is the best example of a book that signifies the importance of making an impact. When I use the word impact, I mean everything from your daily routine to your work and your wealth. What do you do?

This book, which Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) originally published in 1937, is about success in all facets of life, but it’s often referred to as the No. 1 business book ever written. Hill researched the men who built America, including Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation. Whether you like them or not, they did successful things that built entire industries and things we still use and do today. After studying these highly successful people for decades, Hill discussed in his book the commonalities he found among them.

I go back to this book often because I love the mentality it encourages. In particular, I often listen to the chapter on persistence because with everything in life, if you persist enough, success is right around the corner. Yet sometimes we just don’t work hard enough. I just listened to the first chapter again on a recent walk. This book is life-changing, and when you go back and read it at different times in your life, a different life lesson will stand out to you. If you are a high performer, if you want to make an impact in any capacity, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill is mandatory.

• Have you read Think and Grow Rich? If not, please do so! And if you haven’t read it in a while, read it again!
• Jot down the powerful lessons you learn each time you read the book or a part of it. You’ll probably learn something different each time, depending on what you are going through in your life at that time.

F = Faith: The Bible

This one is a no-brainer. For me, the book that has fostered faith the most is the Bible. My faith has always been extremely important to me. I grew up in a Catholic school, and I went to church every Sunday. My parents and grandparents always instilled in me a tradition, a culture, and a belief that was built around faith.

Whatever your faith is, and whatever book outlines the tenets of your faith, I encourage you to learn more about it. Read it from start to finish. It is empowering!

It took the pandemic for me to read the entire Bible. I had to feel completely out of control in my life before I made the commitment to start every single day with reading a chapter in the Bible. I read through the entire Bible through a 90-day timeline adventure. And then I went back and read through it again. Now I’m re-reading different chapters at different times, and I read some Scripture every single morning. It’s how I start my day. I cannot believe I didn’t do this earlier in my career, earlier in my life. How I functioned prior to reading the Bible in-depth is a mystery to me. It amazes me how pertinent the guidance that was written so long ago still is to my life today — to our lives today. The Bible is truly powerful and life-changing for me.

Because I grew up going to church, I’ve always known about the life-changing lessons the Bible teaches. But reading all the way through the Bible changed the whole dynamic to me. It gave me a feeling of a superpower, knowing I can go back to it at any time and discover something new, wisdom that applies to what I’m experiencing at any given time. It’s much like I return to Think and Grow Rich, but on a much greater scale. In the Bible, the lessons I learn are not just for one aspect of business or life; it applies to all of life — from daily living to relationships to contemplating eternal life.

My faith, and the teachings in the Bible, are the root, the foundation, of everything I do and believe today.

• I encourage you — no, I challenge you! — to read the Bible from start to finish over the next year.
• If you feel really ambitious, consider following a 90-day timeline for reading the entire Bible. I love reading the Bible according to the storyline. The Bible makes a lot more sense to me with that approach, versus just reading chapter by chapter.

E = Energy: A Man’s Search for Meaning

For me, energy can mean anything that fuels your life. It’s different for different people, but it can be health, fitness, nutrition, meditation, or something else. Although physical fitness and health are extremely important to me, one of the most important sources of energy for me is mindset. A Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (1905–2007) is the best book I’ve ever read on mindset.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychologist who survived multiple concentration camps during World War II, while his entire family perished. He survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. After he was liberated, he establish a new school of existential therapy called logotherapy, based on the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Everything he ever worked for, everything he ever believed in, and every person he loved was stripped away from him in the brutal camps. He was stripped of his dignity as well. I can’t even imagine what he and the other people in the camps experienced.

But Frankl realized one day that there were still some things he could control — for example, how he received information; how he responded to someone who did or said something to him; and the choice to appreciate something joyful, like a bird resting on a branch of a tree.

When it comes to mindset, nothing is more powerful than watching someone conclude that they can control their own destiny. They can control how the world sees them and how they want to see the world, regardless of their circumstances. That’s knowing you are a victor, not a victim. It’s amazing to me.

From Dr. Frankl’s story, you can see how powerful mindset is and how much it influences our energy level — and even our will to live. Despite what you’re going through, the choice is yours! When you make a conscious choice to do or achieve something, you control the results, the outcome and so many different aspects of that decision.

• Think of a challenge you have dealt with in the past or are facing now. To what extent have you agonized over aspects of that situation that you can’t control? Focus instead on the aspects you can control. How could that make a positive difference for you?
• If you sometimes get overwhelmed by negative thoughts, make a conscious choice to stop that cycle and replace those thoughts with positive ones. Over time, notice how your energy increases!

________

Look at your life journey up until this point. Where are you now, compared with where you said you wanted to be years ago? If you feel like your self-development process has stalled, start reading more books! Try to read at least once per month. Be sure to take notes to capture what you learn. Be intentional about transferring the authors’ wisdom to your own circumstances. This can make a huge difference when building a high-performance life.

What book(s) have you read that changed the trajectory of your life? What book do you often go back to? I’d love to know! I’d love to learn from you and from the books you are reading. When people recommend books to me, I often put them on my reading list and then read them. Reading books contributes to my high-performance life, enables me to function at my maximum capacity, and helps me become the best version of myself.

High performers in any profession track productivity based on various benchmarks. But sometimes, that can seem complicated and maybe even discouraging. The process of comparing actual performance with projected performance can scare people into thinking they’re lazy and aren’t doing enough.

But being productive doesn’t have to be such a downer, and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Productivity isn’t always about doing more. It’s about giving your best effort so the result is the greatest it can be. It’s living to your maximum human potential. Winners will always find a way to win, and increasing productivity is a key component of winning.

Here are five simple tips to simplify and supercharge your productivity. These strategies can make it easier for you to execute your optimum level of capacity and success — in your work and in your personal life.

 1. Start slow 

This sounds boring — especially for high performers. It sounds too easy. But here’s the key component: you’ve got to know yourself, and you’ve got to know what it will take for your effort to be a success. 

I’m a sprinter. Sprinters can’t just go out and sprint a race. There is a very intricate startup routine that has to happen. I have to stretch, I have to get my mind right, I have to loosen up my body. It’s all a part of getting myself ready for my maximum effort. This is true of any worthwhile effort. 

• Prepare. If you thrive at the level of maximum effort, which most high performers do, then you have to start slow and build up to that maximum level. You have to prepare for it. It’s rare, maybe even impossible, to bolt out of the starting gate and immediately land at your highest possible level of performance. 

• Practice. Strive to master every aspect of your performance that’s necessary to be successful so that when you exert that energy, you’re ready. 

• Know yourself. Know your mind, your body and your system. And start slow. Build up to your highest level of effort so you can maximize your productivity. 

So, what does this look like in your work? Start your day thoughtfully, with a focus on what’s really important for the day. Don’t go right in and check your emails as soon as you wake up. Don’t start your day with chaos. Reacting to whatever is coming at you can cause you to lose your grip on the day. Instead, focus on your biggest priorities. And that’s tip No. 2. 

2. Prioritize 

Productivity starts with prioritization! Setting priorities is important to performing at your optimum level. Every single day, week, month, quarter and year, prioritize whatever you want to accomplish that would result in your being productive. 

You can’t prioritize everything. Everything cannot be a priority. A priority is one thing, the most important thing — the one that ranks above all others. 

• Set priorities in all areas of your life. We designed our Life Optimization process to help people increase lifelong financial independence and freedom while reducing stress and enhancing their quality of life. Our philosophy about life optimization composes the acronym LIFE, which stands for four elements of the high-performance life: love, impact, faith and energy. 

If you prioritize the most important thing, the most important relationship, the most important impact of your day — whatever you have to get done today — you’re going to feel accomplished at the end of the day. 

• Prioritize your activities every day to keep from getting derailed. If you start slow and prioritize the most important thing, you won’t get derailed by productivity landmines — those distractions, “emergencies” and interruptions that take your focus off your priorities. 

3. Feed your mind and body 

Many people expect results without feeding their mind and their bodies the elements they need to operate optimally. Being productive is about dedicating yourself to not only the result, but to the practice — mind first, then body. 

• Feed your mind. To develop a mindset of growth, feed your mind everything and anything you can that will move you toward your goal. Once you set your goal, determine what you need to know to accomplish that goal that you don’t currently know. Then figure out how you can obtain that knowledge. What can you do to learn and grow? 

• Feed your body. Expecting your body to do something it’s not ready to do is not good for productivity. For example, let’s say you are 65 years old. Your goal is to get in shape by becoming a runner, and you want to start out by jogging, but you haven’t run in 20 years. Remember tip No. 1? Start slow. In this example, that means start out by stretching first and then walking. Practice and master walking, and then begin jogging. Practice and master jogging, and continue to build your endurance before you begin running. 

When you feed the mind and then the body, the results will come. Good outcomes require good fuel — first for the mind and then for the body. Expecting results without that fuel and preparation is not productive in any area of life. If you wake up in the morning and skip breakfast because you’re in a hurry, that will not help you be productive. That’s derailment. You need to give your mind and body the fuel it needs to maintain energy for the entire day. You can expect positive results only if you put practice, dedication and the right fuel into your effort. 

4. Embrace failure 

This tip might seem counterintuitive to high performers. Why would we ever want to embrace failure? It’s because we typically learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. Nelson Mandela said, “I never lose. I either win, or I learn.” When you look at it like that, then you win in every scenario! 

• Embrace failure to develop a growth mindset. Through learning, trial and error and failing, you win, you learn and you grow. These are extremely important capabilities to being more productive. 

• Realize that productivity does not come from perfection. Productivity comes from understanding that when you attempt enough great things, you will fail sometimes. And when you learn from those failures, you become smarter and stronger. Practicing and mastering any skill means you’re growing and learning every day. If you do something wrong, immediately course-correct. Pivot. Making the most out of situations that don’t go your way is a powerful element of productivity. 

• Get comfortable with failing forward. The more you fail, the closer you are to success. To be more productive, focus not on perfection, but on the imperfections that exist in the day. That is a skill in itself — maintaining your focus on your priority when distractions threaten to derail your goals all day, every day. They are inevitable, though, and the better you become at managing those distractions, the more productive and successful you will be. Course-correcting, pivoting, learning and growing all imperative parts of increasing your productivity in a day, a month, a quarter, a year and beyond. 

5. Reset

Last but not least is my favorite thing to talk about and the biggest challenge I’ve ever had in my entire life. I call it the reset. Sometimes when you’re a sprinter, you sprint races that were meant to be long-distance. You have to reassess your goal and then reset your approach. 

• Pause so you can think, reflect and evaluate. A reset is just a pause. It can be short or long. Sometimes, when you’re intensely focused on reaching your goal, you miss some important things along the way. Even though you have identified your goal as your priority, you still have to take care of your family, run your business, maintain your relationships and keep up your energy. So sometimes, you have to remove yourself from your objective, from your goal, from your dream and do a hard reset. Take a step back to think and evaluate your progress. You will never be optimally productive unless you reset once in a while. 

• Ask yourself some important evaluation questions. The most successful moments in my business life, my family life, my faith, my health and anything else I do happen when I take a step back to pause, think, reevaluate and then start the process all over again. 

During these resets, I ask myself, “What isn’t going right? What failures did I just learn from? What am I rushing that I need to slow down? How can I start slower and learn from my mistakes? Did I prioritize the most important thing, or was the most important thing that I thought was important not as important now that I’ve gotten closer to the goal? Who or what am I neglecting as I sprint toward my goal?” 

• Prioritize doing nothing sometimes. One step beyond the pause is the temporary stop. High performers obviously want more productivity. We all want to get more done in a day. But sometimes, we get overwhelmed. 

We are like our devices — our iPhones, devices and computers. We work them to death and expect them to produce optimally for us all the time. But every once in a while, those electronics get overwhelmed, and they become sluggish or stop working. When that happens, we have to turn them off for a little while and then turn them back on. Sometimes we need to clean out the cache or reset the modem. We need to do the same thing for ourselves! 

Once in a while, I wake up and I say, “I don’t want to get anything done today. I want to prioritize nothingness — I want to take in the peace, the quiet, the stillness of nature.” Sometimes that is the most important thing because it gets you to the next level. 

________ 

Productivity isn’t just important in work. It’s also critical to our ability to live life to the fullest in terms of our relationships, faith and health. Productivity is important in anything you’re trying to accomplish that you’ve set as a predominant goal or a prioritized objective for yourself — even your dreams. 

What are you trying to accomplish? How can you increase your productivity? How can you embrace the idea of failing forward? What can you learn to fuel your growth? 

Whether you’re a high performer or striving to become one, you want to live a life that is so incredible that you feel joy and happiness every day. You’re tired of feeling stressed, unhappy, and uncomfortable. Adopt these powerful habits to feel incredible every day.

1. Replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts.

When we focus on the barrage of negative media coming at us all hours of the day, it’s easy to get caught up in the negativity that surrounds us. When you’re doing nothing but watching and reading news reports, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all that’s wrong with our world. It can lead you to think, “Look how bad everything is today.”You get into a funk, into a space it’s hard to get out of. And you can’t feel incredible when you’re in a space filled with negativity.

Have you ever noticed that it’s really hard to stop dwelling on bad news? It’s not just you! There’s a scientific reason for it, and this phenomenon is called “negativity bias.”

Science tells us that it’s typical for us to focus more on the negative than the positive. It is the “bad things,” not the good ones, that grab our attention, stay in our memories and influence the decisions we make. Focusing on potential danger is an innate instinct that kept our cavepeople ancestors alive. This tendency to dwell on the negative more than the positive is simply one way our brains try to keep us safe.

•Understand “negativity bias.” Realize that your brain is hardwired to pay more attention to bad news than to good news.

•Be intentional about changing your thought process. As soon as a negative thought enters your mind, replace it with a positive thought.

2. Focus on love, impact, faith, and energy

I want to share with you a powerful strategy for replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts.

What works for me, and for most people we coach and consult, is to focus on what I believe are the four key components of a high-performance life: love, impact, faith, and energy, expressed by the acronym LIFE. Focusing on these four elements sets the stage for you to live your best possible life and to feel incredible every day. In fact, we designed our Life Optimization process to help people increase lifelong financial independence and freedom while reducing stress and enhancing their quality of life.

By focusing on love, impact, faith, and energy, you can feel more energized and hopeful than ever before. So, what does this look like from a practical standpoint? When you realize you are feeling down about something, pause for a moment and replace those thoughts with positive thoughts—those related to love, impact, faith and energy.

L = Love

Maybe you’ve just read the newest update about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The moment you realize this subject is making you feel bad, focus instead on the people in your life whom you love. It starts with loving yourself, yes. But when you love someone else, you feel incredible. When you prioritize the most important relationships in your life, and you demonstrate your love to them, it strengthens one of the most important foundations of an incredible life.

•Translate thoughts of the people you love into concrete action. Maybe you’ve been so busy that you haven’t talked to your parents in a while. Call your mom and/or dad and talk to them, even if it’s for a few minutes. You will probably feel better afterward. They will, too. Now, that example won’t apply to everyone. If that isn’t something that will make you feel better, then call someone else.

•Feel loved by giving love to others. When I start my day and set priorities, it makes me feel incredible to plan on spending some one-on-one time with my wife. I feel better. I feel loved. And I feel loved because I’m giving love. It starts with giving something of yourself. The incredible life you want starts with giving of yourself to someone else.

I = Impact

To feel incredible, create a habit of doing something daily to increase your impact. This is something I began practicing in my life many, many years ago, and I have continued to develop it. It’s ridiculously simple. You just have to do something good for someone else every single day. What can you do that will make a positive impact in someone else’s life? Do not rest your head on your pillow to go to sleep until you’ve made someone else feel good, to help them.

Maybe you see someone trying to climb a flight of stairs while carrying a heavy box. Carry that box! Or maybe you call or text someone who’s having a hard time, just to encourage them and let them know you’re thinking of them. Or maybe you tell someone at the supermarket that they look great today, and you see them light because your positivity interrupted their own negative thoughts! (Your words matter—always.)

• Develop the habit of daily impact, focus on doing just one thing per day for someone else. Guess what? The minute you do it once, you’re going to do it all the time. You’re going to find yourself having a habit of daily impact over and over and over and over again, and you will feel incredible. Because you are doing this all the time, focused on demonstrating your love to others, you can’t get stuck in a funk.

•Turn your focus outward, to others. If you love your work but find yourself in a negative space, maybe dealing with setbacks in your progress, stop and ask yourself, “What do I love about my job? What can I do to help somebody else today?”Simply by distancing yourself from your own objectives, you will develop the positive mindset that enables you to exit that negative space and feel incredible again. As author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy says, “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

F = Faith

Faith is simply believing in something bigger than yourself. Personally, my faith is in God, but this will be different for many people. Maybe to you, faith means spirituality, nature, or something else. Here’s the key component. When you place your faith in something beyond your own control, it leads you to find peace in your day, no matter how hectic and stressful it is. When we worry only about ourselves, it’s easy to become stressed—ego is something that stands in the way of happiness for many people, often high performers. They focus on what they deserve, what they need, and how they will get it. But when you are focusing on the object of your faith, your stress will evaporate, and you will feel incredible. With the object of your faith empowering you, it’s impossible to feel bad! This is a valuable —no, priceless —component of the high-performance life.

•Define what “faith” means to you. It’s difficult to place your faith at the feet of an entity or concept you haven’t identified clearly.

•Every day, consciously place your trust in the object of your faith. This will enable you to build the habit.

•Let go of the compulsion to try to control everything. When I do that, I feel incredible.

E = Energy

All of us, especially high performers, need to have ample physical, mental, and emotional energy to achieve all we want to do, both for others and ourselves. How can you feel incredible without energy? What are you doing to create more energy? This starts with eating well and exercising. Our bodies crave nutritious foods and movement.

Recently, I went to a concert after having a really stressful morning. I did my morning routine, prioritized the most important tasks for the day, and I practiced my spiritual start to my day through prayer. I did not exercise, though, so I already felt behind. But I did get a lot accomplished at work, and I made a positive impact on others, so the love was there. I felt empty because I hadn’t exercised. But because energy is one of my four main focal points in my life, I set out to get some movement in, even though the evening had already come.

When I got to the concert location, I parked far away so I’d have to walk a good distance to get to the concert and back to my car. Once we were seated, every time somebody who was with me had to get up to go somewhere, I went with them. I walked as much as I could while listening to the music. Did I look weird doing that? Maybe. But here’s the thing. My daily focus on energy, on movement, helps me feel incredible. It helps me feel accomplished at the end of the day.

•Focus on love, impact, faith, and energy every single day. Set priorities in each area, and hold yourself accountable to them. Accountability is a necessary ingredient of accomplishing goals.

•Make the choice to focus on these priorities. The choice is yours and yours alone to create happiness and joy in your life every day.

How do you handle stress? As you strive to reach the goals you’ve set, how do you feel incredible every day, in each of these four LIFE categories? What do you need to do to show more love to others? To practice a habit of daily impact? To place your faith in something bigger than yourself? And to move and get more energy? What’s the energy you put out into the world? Identify it because that’s what you will get back if you do it right.

If negative thoughts invade your mind and interrupt your good mood and progress, try replacing those thoughts, the moment you become aware of what’s happening. Focusing on love, impact, faith, and energy will fuel your high-performance life and make you feel incredible.

Being a “high performer” typically leads to valuable rewards, both tangible and other — higher compensation, bonuses, recognition and prestige. If you aspire to live a high-performance life, it’s important to recognize that your efforts have to extend beyond you. It’s about the people that you surround yourself with — including your team.

“Teamwork Makes The Dream Work”

Your team is the most important factor to living a more successful and high-performance life. This is why it is critical that you build your team strategically and thoughtfully. If you build your team the right way, placing the right people in the right positions, they can amplify your success to a level you’ve never experienced before. In my experiences of mentoring high performers, people make their biggest mistakes when they get lost in themselves. As pastor, speaker and New York Times best-selling author John Maxwell says, “Teamwork is what makes the dream work.”

Five Critical Elements of Teamwork

Let’s look at five critical factors that are extremely important in working with your team. Focusing on these elements of high performance can lead you to reach new levels of success.

1. Your role

The first critical factor to focus on is your role on your team and within your organization. What are you great at, and where do your strengths lie? So many times, high performers try to do it all. They feel like they are the best at everything. Maybe they can do a little bit of everything, but no one excels at everything. Once you recognize what you do best, you can surround yourself with team members who excel in the areas that are not your strong suit.

• Build your team thoughtfully. Be strategic about the people you surround yourself with. As leaders, we are only half as good as we can be if we haven’t put the right people in place to bring our ideas to life.

Multiple times in my career, I’ve had to stop, take a step back and acknowledge that I am a visionary. I’m the type of person who loves to lay out the plan, chart the course and break the idea down in a multitude of ways. I excel in this area, which means I must surround myself with people who are skilled at executing those plans and ideas. When I do that, I’m free! I’m free to envision, plan and map out exactly where we need to go so we can all be successful.

• Know your role and your strengths! What skills, talents and knowledge do you contribute that no one else can? It is crucial to establishing the right team and building a high-performance life.

2. The common goal

The second critical element of building an effective team is the common goal. Everybody needs to be marching to the same spot.

Where are you going? Why are you going there? What is the purpose behind that destination? Does everybody know where you’re going and why? Can everybody say it? Do you have a mutual mission or goal as a team?

• Make sure your team is moving in unison. If I know I’m going somewhere and I need everybody else to help me get there, I’ve got to make sure we all know the what, the why and the how so we’re moving together. Everyone on your team needs to understand that common goal and support it. If they don’t support it, find out why. Open, honest communication is paramount. Then, when you step forward, everybody steps forward. When the team members step back, you step back. The entire team moves in unison.

• Set meaningful goals. For both individuals and teams, goals are key to achieving anything you want. Yet they have to be attainable. You don’t want to set goals so ambitious that no one can achieve them. I’ve seen many high performers set goals that are so far-reaching that people on the team can feel like they’re never winning. Having your team members feel defeated all the time won’t move you toward success.

• Make sure you celebrate even the small wins along the way! Big wins are the ones that will really move the needle forward, but the small wins will keep your team feeling inspired about moving toward the goal.

3. Positivity

Most high performers understand the importance of those first two elements of teamwork — their role and their goal. The third factor, however, is one that many high performers take for granted: positivity.

• Recognize that positivity is a crucial ingredient to success and life. If you are not generally positive in your outlook — if you do not find the positivity in even apparently disappointing situations — you will fail, and you will fail quickly. Now, this doesn’t mean you are always wearing rose-colored glasses and looking at the positive aspect of every bad situation to the point where you miss the lessons you could learn from that situation. Instead, positivity means doing what you do with a smile on your face, accepting things the way they are and moving on from there. That is a real talent.

• Your mindset is half the battle! The high-performance life is all about building something around a positive mindset. If you can get positivity to be the first thing you think of instead of focusing on everything that’s wrong, everything that’s broken, and everything that’s going in the wrong direction, that is a key hallmark of high performers and successful entrepreneurs.

• See all the good and all the bad, but don’t focus on the bad. They examine each situation to figure out what’s working, why it is working, who is working best and what can be done to improve the outlook. They examine strengths and weaknesses and use that knowledge to optimize their success.

4. A growth mindset

“If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” That famous quote has been attributed to William S. Burrough, Tony Robbins, Lou Holtz and others. I’ve lived by this quote my entire life.

• Are you growing, or are you dying? Like positivity, a growth mindset is an underrated yet critical aspect of high performance. Because, if you excel at what you do but are unwilling to learn new things from the talented people around you, it’s difficult to grow.

• Choose an abundance mentality vs. a scarcity mentality. If you have an abundance mentality, you will freely share your knowledge and wisdom with your team members to make them stronger as well. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen Covey compares an abundance mindset with a scarcity mindset. The two are direct opposites. Believing there’s enough success for everyone is a hallmark of an abundance mentality, and it leads to greater success. As a result, everyone will thrive more than if you kept your wisdom to yourself. If you maintain a scarcity mindset, you are much less likely to achieve success.

• Be curious. One way I maintain a growth mindset is by reaching out to people I admire who are experts in areas I don’t know much about. I want to learn more about their areas of expertise. If I don’t understand their approach, I often say, “Help me understand the ‘why’ behind this because I want to know more. I want to understand this from the ground up.”

• Take the time to “fail forward.” When we are open to learning from others, we can benefit both from their knowledge and from any mistakes they’ve made so we can avoid making similar mistakes. Make it a point to learn from other people why something isn’t working or moving in the right direction. Learn a little bit every day. Take the time to read, to grow, and to learn from others.

5. Leadership development

Leadership is very important to becoming a high performer, but we need to take that one step further and foster leadership development. I opened this blog post by saying becoming a high performer needs to go beyond yourself. Leadership development, the fifth critical factor in team building, is a perfect example.

• Embrace your role as the coach. Yes, you want to develop your own leadership skills, but that’s just the beginning. To ensure that everyone on your team is performing optimally, you must develop their leadership skills as well. As the leader of your team, you are the coach. You are the person who can help your team grow with every single interaction you have with them. This means listening carefully, both to what your team members are saying and what they’re not saying.

How you deliver a message is often just as important as the message itself. Take a deep dive into every conversation so you can get to the heart of their concerns. Encourage them to share what’s going well for them and what isn’t. Also, interact with each team member in the way they respond to best.

• Notice opportunities, and point them out to your team. How can you develop your team to be stronger every single day? This is one responsibility you have as a leader. A stronger team grows together best when they have a strong leader who is willing to point out opportunities, who’s willing to make sure they know when they’ve done something really, really great. Your team looks to you to know when and how something needs to be tweaked just a little bit so they can pivot. One small tweak can make a major difference; take the time to recognize these opportunities and to teach your team how to take advantage of them.

• Make sure you are focusing on your team’s development, not just your own. Too many times, high performers think, “I could do this much faster if I just do it myself and not get anyone else involved.” That is not leadership development. Share your approach, your wisdom, with your team members to help them recognize when tweaks need to be made. Yes, it might take a little bit more time if you get them involved, but once they do something new a couple of times, they could potentially get even better than you’ve ever been at that task.

Leadership development is a crucial part of a team mentality. Strive to develop your team not just so they can excel today, but also so they can grow and become high performers themselves. This is a valuable mindset for high performers.

As a high performer, you likely understand your own space very well — what’s important to you, what makes you click and how you can be successful. Yet a true leader is one who can do the same for everyone on the team as well. The stronger your team members are, the more they can contribute to that common goal. That will free up your time and focus to do what you do best.

Teamwork is so valuable to our company’s success that over the years, I’ve always spent a little more on people and human capital than on branding and marketing. Why? Because I have found that having a larger, stronger and more successful team leads to high performance in all areas of the company. In my space, I know what I need to be most successful. I am careful to recognize areas that I should ask someone else to handle so I can optimize my productivity doing what I do best.

Conclusion

What are you doing right now that isn’t the best use of your time? What could you accomplish if you delegated those tasks to someone else on your team? Don’t get bogged down in details that someone else could handle better.

What does a high-performance life really mean to you? Figure that out, and then focus on building your best possible team. Teamwork can’t make the dream work if you don’t know what your goal in life really is.

Every leader, team and organization is different. Take some time to identify the unique elements that enhance your success. What makes you click? What makes you successful? And to what extent do you define your success based on the team behind you, rather than yourself?

Even if you don’t run a company, you still have a team. Your team can be your family, your best friends or the people in your network. So once you recognize that your team is more powerful than its individual members, you can accelerate your achievement of the high-performance life at a whole new level. Your quality of life will shoot higher every single day. You will be achieving life optimization, which translates to freedom!

Scott Danner, CEO of Freedom Street Partners shares what he has learned by acquiring the businesses of several financial advisors over the years. Scott also explains how working with Aaron Hasler and the team at SkyView Partners has accelerated their ability to grow through acquisition. Access to financing and professional guidance has been crucial to Freedom Street Partner’s success.

To listen to the episode simply click play on the audio stream below or listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. You can find The Advisor Financing Forum on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Transcript

Mike:

Hi, there. It’s Mike Langford. Welcome to The Advisor Financing Forum, a podcast presented by SkyView Partners. In this episode, Aaron Hasler and I are kicking off a series that will feature RIAs and individual advisors who have completed mergers, acquisitions, and/or a partial business sale. Our first guest is Scott Danner, CEO of Freedom Street Partners. Scott has acquired several advisory businesses over the years, and he and his team have leaned on SkyView Partners not only for their financing to make these deals possible, but, as Scott will tell you, SkyView actually helped in many other ways as well. This is a fantastic conversation, so be prepared to take notes because Scott really opened up the playbook and shared a ton of insights and wisdom that he’s been able to accumulate by going through the acquisition process multiple times.

            Before we jump into our conversation with Scott, please make sure you hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you’re listening, and do us a solid. Share the show with your network on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. It’s super easy. Just click the share button in the podcast app, and then type in something like, “Great podcast for any RIA or independent financial advisor thinking about buying a practice or book a business. Give it a listen.” Then click the post button and, voila, you’ve shared it with your network. Trust me, your network will appreciate it. And, hey, who knows, maybe another advisor in your network will see it and reach out to explore selling you his or her business.

            Okay. One last thing. If you have questions or suggestions for guests or topics for the show, please send them to podcast@skyview.com. And if you are feeling inspired to follow in Scott’s footsteps, swing by skyview.com or call 866-567-6282, and the team will help you get the ball rolling right away. All right. Let’s get to it with Aaron Hasler and Scott Danner.

            Well, Scott Danner, Aaron Hasler, great to see you gentlemen first thing in the morning here. How are you?

Scott:

I’m all set, man. I’m great. How about you, Aaron?

Aaron:

Mike, I’m great as well. Glad to be here, and we’re looking forward to the conversation today.

Mike:

Awesome. Well, Aaron and I are kind of dressed as twins here. We both have our black polo shirts on. Aaron is in his basement bunker. I’m in the home office here. And Scott is making us look terrible because he’s dapper as heck, looking handsome. If you want to see what Scott looks like, obviously, check him out on Freedom Street Partners website. You can also check him out on LinkedIn, and we’ll make sure that everybody gets that contact information after the show. But looking great, thank you for joining us this morning, sir.

            So I thought we’d have a bit of a diving in here to kick things off because it was really interesting. Aaron mentioned that he wanted to have you on the show, and he told me a little bit about your background. One of the things that jumped out to me, because I’ve talked to so many financial advisors, so many people building fintech companies and so forth, and there’s a different mental makeup, if you will, for people who decide to grow through acquisition, and you’ve now done multiple acquisitions. So I thought maybe it could be fun to kick things off with what was the mindset for your aha moment, where you’re like, “You know what? I’m going to go through acquisition as part of my strategy for this business.”

Scott:

Sure. I think it’s interesting because there really is an aha moment. When you look at the organic growth and you’re growing a pretty good practice and life is moving along at a good rate, you have this moment where you’re like, “Wait a second.” The average age of an advisor in our industry is 62. The average person that trained me was 20 years older than me, and I still have a couple of decades of experience. I’m a baby in an industry but with a bevy of experience and wisdom that I’m still learning as I go. But it kind of created this thought process where it happened over time but then the aha was looking at the industry and really evaluating where the industry was heading and how many advisors had zero planning for themselves. I was shocked and astonished, talked to so many advisors who had literally changed the lives of hundreds or thousands of their clients doing the very thing that we often dong do ourselves. In talking to these advisors and understanding what was out there, I just saw a really great opportunity.

            I also had spent a ton of time training advisors, both on the new side and on the veteran as the industry transitioned from this transaction-driven to a more service-based RIA style practice, fiduciary standards, regulations, all these things that were pointing us in a direction that I felt really gave us an edge. So the aha was, “Okay, I can build on one client at a time,” and I still want to do that, but the other part to this practice that I’d like to expand upon is 80, 100, 200 million dollars at a time and how do we leverage our experience, the relationships with these advisors that we’ve been working with for a long time, and make it into something special? That was the thought process behind it.

Mike:

That’s really interesting to me, the way you came about that, because it is really true. When you’re in your 40s, you feel like you’ve been doing this forever, and then you realize, “Wow, there’s still people that are in their 60s here,” and they are the first wave, if you will, of financial advisors, right? Because prior to that, they were called stockbrokers, and many of them got their start in the business when they were called stockbrokers. Then something happened during their career and everybody changed to financial advisors and the business model and the service model changed a little bit, but they are now the first wave of advisors coming up towards retirement years, and retirement for them isn’t looking like maybe they imagined it in the early days, right? Maybe they didn’t even imagine it, and now they’re here like, “Well, what’s my exit plan or whatever? What’s my glide path,” as Aaron and the team at SkyView like to use that phrase a lot, and I really like that, so I’m stealing it unabashedly.

Scott:

You know, what’s super interesting to me is that we’re all around the same age, and we’re of that generation that actually grew up in a timeline where we really weren’t driven by the technology and the computers. I got to college and had intro to email, and then by the time I was leaving, we were tapped in everywhere. By the time that I was two years out, we were doing fantasy football drafts online. Life had changed forever. I kind of feel like it’s the same transition we’ve seen in our industry. We’re in that trapped generation where I started as an investment representative. I was a sales person learning the industry, and I quickly realized that that was not the trajectory of the business of the future. It was not the visions that clients had for how they wanted to be served, and I wasn’t going to go down that path.

            But we also had a foot on both sides. We grew up with no technology, we grew up in the industry where it was, and, certainly, we were trained by people that were all of that generation but were also charting the path and understand the technological advances, the fintech, the unbelievable experience that we bring to the table by still being across the desk from somebody and being able to understand their needs and their goals and that face-to-face value. So I feel like it’s almost that generational gap. It’s almost like a lottery because we’re in the mix, in the middle of something, between the stuff that was great of old and the really awesome stuff ahead.

Mike:

I read an article about this a few years ago, and it’s really hit me that we are the last generation to become adults before the Internet was a thing, right? So I entered the workforce in 1994 as a professional out of college. Last generation of people to become an adult and the Internet really wasn’t just yet, it was just getting started. We had a little bit of email in college there, and it was all on a DOS-based type computer.

Scott:

The DOS-based system, yeah. The blinking dot.

Mike:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Scott:

You can send your mom an email, but she doesn’t have a computer.

Mike:

And nobody used it. Nobody used it at that point in time. But we are the last generation to become adults and … We still had maps in our cars. Remember that? You had maps in your cars and things like that. Bridging the gap with that … Because I think you’re 100% right, we had to learn how to use email. You actually had a formal training class. When I was at Pioneer Mutual Funds, we had formal training. Rolling out email to all employees? You had to train how to load a CC mail. You had to actually take a class to do it.

            Many of the advisors that you’re talking about, where you’re acquiring their business and you’re helping them on their glide path towards retirement, got their start and they were in business for 20-plus years before the Internet and email and all those types of things. Many of them, I suspect, have carried over some of those old-school techniques, so, for instance, the lunch and learn type of thing, like come to a seminar in order to learn a little bit about financial planning retirement, whatever, college planning, what have you, and you hope that some clients come out of that. Many of them have a very personalized, across the desk type of experience, but COVID-19 obviously is accelerating the work from home and having conversations like we’re doing remotely.

            Are you finding that not only is the feeling they should be getting closer to retirement a motivator but also, “I don’t want to take on this next wave of technology?” Is that something that’s starting to motivate sellers, that they’re thinking, “I know there’s a lot more technological stuff coming along that”-

Scott:

Aaron, you’re probably hearing a ton of this, but I think regulation scares a lot of advisors. I think the way that the business has changed and the way that we’ve executed systems and processes and how we’ve built in the bandwidth to be able to just adapt when things adjust for the benefit of the client, we’re not scared of that, and a lot of advisors that have been doing this a long time are petrified of what the future looks like and what the demands are, and that’s a big thing in their mind. Quite frankly, some of the advisors that we’ve talked to and acquired, their note-taking and their service to their clients have been impeccable and some of the technologies, the basic technologies they have been using day in and day out, are very, very valuable even for us as we take over the practices. There is a major fear factor of change.

            Again, it’s what gives us that special value add because we did it on both ends. We did it from one side where the technology and the regulation was different. We did it where it was more of a transactional business. Having now been on the other side, we’re able to understand and empathize with what everybody’s going through. If you’ve been in this business for a couple decades and you haven’t felt overwhelmed by the changes at some point in time, you’re lying to yourself because I know I have, and now as a leader of our company, it’s even more daunting sometimes and you’re like, “Okay, we’re built for this, but let’s also take a step back and evaluate what this looks like. What is the liabilities? What are the risks? How can we make sure we’re always doing what’s in the best interest for our clients?” I don’t know, Aaron, I think you guys get to talk to a lot of advisors on both sides of the coin. What are you hearing?

Aaron:

I would echo some similarities to that. I consulted with my own father as he was leading up to his own retirement, and it was a completely different industry. But his comment was, “I’m having a hard time keeping up with the continuing education and the mental involvement that it requires to run a good practice.” I think we’re seeing that sellers are in that same position. Like Scott talked about, it’s the increased regulation. It’s the continual change. It’s the adaptations to technology.

            Mike, you talked about it as far as technology and are these advisors keeping up. I think some do a really good job, but others just don’t even know what they’re missing, right? They have no idea that there’s a whole realm of services out there. But I think it’s just more of that energy level. We see all the time where advisors will start to, as they approach their mid-60s or just past 65, their energy level starts to wane a little bit, and so some of these extra things that we’re doing on an adaptation basis become harder and harder. That’s where it’s an interesting pivot and you start to see their wheels turning. “Maybe I should sell my practice. Maybe I should find a succession plan.”

Mike:

Glad you brought that up, the energy level thing, because this is observational just through meeting thousands of advisors over the years and it’s not a knock, but it is a reality that for many advisors this becomes a lifestyle business, right? They build their business, they get the book up to a point where they’re making 200, 300, maybe $400,000 a year, they’re living a really good life, they’re playing a crap-ton of golf and just enjoying life, and they might be working 40 hrs a week or maybe even less. By the way, good on you if that is the jam that you have created. It’s a really good situation. But one side effect of that can be you get really comfortable, and when pressure to innovate or adopt the new thing comes your way, it can be a little bit like, “Well, why would I do that? I’m going to make 400 grand next year anyway, even if I don’t change.”

            But then there’s an inflection point, right? You get toward a certain point where you realize, “Oh, the business could start to decline. My clients are getting a little older or whatever. In order to attract and bring up new clients, there’s going to be an expectation that I offer these other things, these other experiences. I’m not 100% sure if I’m up for that.” Is that the type of things that you guys, you’re coming in contact with, or am I just anecdotalizing and projecting something to the masses?

Scott:

I think we’re seeing it. I think we’re seeing exactly that. The only thing that I would say is slightly different, logically, it makes complete sense that one would come to the conclusion that maybe the time has come that I might want to transition out, but most people don’t. Most people actually still fight it to some extent. One of the things that we’ve spent a lot of time on and I’ve actually spent … Aaron and I have talked a ton about this, is what I call the preamble to getting to that point, the preemptive moments that somebody has to get to before they’re ready to sell their business, right?

            Because even when they’re selling it, sometimes they’re not even fully engaged or aware of the level of what that means. It’s so challenging because their business is their life, their business is their legacy and their impact, and their business is where they spend all their time away from home. And, yes, the golf course and some of these other things may be a part of that lifestyle practice, but you take away even the place to go and do your bills on a Monday morning and it changes someone’s life.

            I’ve been working on a book the last year and a half, and it should come out either at the end of this year or just … COVID set us back a little bit. But we should have it, if not by the end of this year, January of 2021. But it’s built off of creating a rich life for financial advisors, living your legacy now so that you can really figure out your legacy beyond your business. Your impact has to go beyond your business for you to really separate it at any point in time. Then owning your future is identifying the steps that you would take, but by the time you get to owning your future, you’re mentally prepared. You’re psychologically and emotionally ready for what’s ahead.

            To your point, Mike, they are definitely challenged with the changes and challenged with the way that things are moving, and the lifestyle business makes it very difficult. So it is hard to give up the guaranteed income in their brains every year. I know I would be challenged with that, so when I say they, I mean us. But at the same time, I’ve found it to be … There’s almost a preemptive step that is the most challenging that we’re spending a lot of time working through to get advisors more prepared.

Aaron:

No, sorry, Mike, I was going to say … I mean, this is super interesting and this is what I think is fascinating to have Scott on the call, because at SkyView we’re reactive, right? We have said, “Okay, these advisors are making good income. They don’t necessarily want to retire. So let’s come up with a solution to give the buyers of the world 100% financing.” That way, we can entice from a monetary standpoint these sellers and replace some of that income immediately, securitize that ongoing revenue stream with a bank loan, and the buyer can really maximize what they’re going to pay out that advisor.

            But what goes into the emotional conversation, and how much time do you spend on the emotional hand-holding of that seller? Because we hammer the message of financing is here, it’s available, it’s practical, it makes sense, so why not apply it? But I know we’re missing that whole emotional side of the conversation, which you’re more integrated into because you’re practicing with them every day. So tell us a little bit about that. How do you manage those emotions? How do you work with them, and how do you get them to a point where they’re interested in selling you a practice?

Scott:

I think you’ve got to build the rapport. Advisors are really good at building trust with their clients. You can’t just be good at what you do. You’ve got to be honest and authentic and you have to really look out for someone’s best interest, and people will feel and see that. The same thing applies in this business. There’s a lot of sharks and there’s a lot of dolphins. The sharks don’t give a darn about your business. They just want to own it and aggregate and do everything they can to build. Truthfully, what we’re trying to do is create a connection with businesses that are in markets we want to be in with people that have something bigger than themselves. The community input is large, they have family attributes that we’re interested in. I find some connection point to the people that we’re working with.

            One of our advisors in the Charlotte market, everybody knew this guy. He was just a fixture in the community, and working with him to purchase the practice, it was a learning experience and a growth experience for us just learning from his experience in general. He had an entire career before the 30-plus year career in finance, and he was 79 years old. I know you understand, but the individual that goes through this, you don’t know how many hours I spent on the phone just talking through the next steps or reminding people throughout the process that it is our business when we take it over, it’s no longer your business, and how that feels, and then finding the right personality in our office to help with the transitioning.

            You asked a specific question, and I want to answer that, and that is how many hours goes in. I honestly would say it depends on the relationship. It’s one of those things where … The most recent acquisition we purchased, I would go for a walk from … We started talking a year ago, and we closed in June. From January to March, at least a couple times a week, I would go for a three-mile walk, call this individual on the phone, and talk for 60 to 90 minutes. When I say talk, I would listen for about 30 to 60, talk for about 15, get the points out, but I was listening to what was important to them.

            I go back to the book real briefly, but the recipe is you have to define what rich means to them. What is the button that makes them feel like they’re missing something? What are the things that they want to do more of that they can’t do while they work? What defines a rich life? Not wealth, but rich, rich in family, in time, and when you find that, that’s what we’re working for. That’s our why, right? That’s the big factor. The next thing is that legacy. What are they doing outside of work? I’ve got to understand that. If there’s nothing else, oh, man, that is going to be a challenge. Those are the worst because now we have to help them find that and we have to help give them back some of the time that they didn’t know they had.

            Owning their future is what you guys at SkyView and our team at Freedom Street and the industry does so well, is we give them the recipe for success, but they have to be preemptively prepared. I would say most of them are logically prepared. Most of them logically know what they need to earn, logically know what the steps are, and emotionally absolutely as unprepared as anyone can be.

Mike:

You know, I’ve never acquired another small business. I was on the teams that worked on deals to acquire large businesses when I worked in a corporate job, but I’ve never had to navigate the intricacies of buying a small business like an RIA firm. And as Scott Danner relates, it’s not always easy. That’s why the team at SkyView has experts like Aaron Hasler, Kara Miller, Jayne Christian, and many others on their team to work hand in hand with you and the seller every step of the way. An RIA loan through SkyView isn’t a point in time transaction. It’s part of a long-term partnership. If you would like to explore how SkyView can help you in your RIA acquisition process, reach out on skyview.com or call 866-567-6282. Or if you prefer email, simply shoot a note to info@skyview.com, and someone will get right with you. Now, let’s get back to our conversation with Scott and Eric.

            That’s really interesting, and I love that you brought that up, that most of them have logically prepared because we’ve all experienced that type of stuff. I made the really simple example a week or so ago about my in-laws sold their family house and moved to a condo in downtown Boston and they bought a vacation place up in New Hampshire. They walked away from the house that they raised their family in. Well, then, one time they drove by the house and the new owners had re-landscaped the front, yanked this big bush out, all this other type of stuff. My mother-in-law lost her mind. Logically, she knows it’s not her house anymore, right? They made this decision. They got value out of it. They get to live in downtown Boston and the culture and they get to have this New Hampshire lake house and all that type of stuff. Yeah, squirrelly up in the head all of a sudden because the emotions, right? It’s like, “I planted those bushes. My kids played out in that front yard and that stuff.”

            So if it’s that easy to get emotionally involved with bushes, imagine with all the relationships that these advisors have developed with their clients and their clients’ children and sometimes their grandchildren. As you mentioned, this is my baby, I built this type of thing. It’s really exciting to hear that you work so hard to do that and there’s a lot of conversations happening. That’s, I think, good advice for anybody who’s considering buying or selling your businesses. Start tackling that as soon as possible.

Scott:

Everyone wants to buy a practice, okay? So what is there, 50 to 60 interested buyers, actually closer to 80 or 90. But only 50 or so are probably qualified in some capacity, not 100% capacity, and then most of them have ever done it and they’re within 10 years of the actual person’s age that they’re buying it in. So they’re also going to be planning for the same thing in a very short amount of time. It’s the transitioning that we see that can be challenging.

            I’ve used that exact analogy, Mike, multiple times. After we’ve completed the deal, I’ve had to say, “Listen, this is like selling your home and you raised your family in this home and you’ve done all these things. You built it, you custom-built this home. But now I bought it and I own it. The only difference is I want you to rent from me and stay in the home with me for an extended period of time so that we can make it an easy transition both for you and the clients.” That analogy, sometimes it’s as easy and beautiful as I just sounded, and then other times it’s, “Dude, we own the house now. You got to understand. You can’t change the bushes when you want to change the bushes anymore. The bushes are ours, and we’re liable for the bushes. We got to make sure that we do this the right way.” That is a challenge at times. That is a challenge.

Mike:

When advisors are selling the business, it’s not a pull the ripcord, they’re out as soon as the business is sold, right? Unlike many other businesses, oftentimes there’s a period where you sell a business and the other executive stays on for a while, former owner stays on for a little bit, but it’s usually relatively short. But in an advisory practice, it can be years at times because it’s so important. You basically bought relationships and this stream of cashflow that are generated from those relationships and the accounts that are associated with them. So it’s really important that there’s that really good transition period, and it can be relatively short, but oftentimes it is years, so I think it’s really important that you made that point that they get on board because if you want to keep getting paid in this full price that we talked about to happen, it’s got to be smooth.

Aaron:

Yeah, you talk about all the things that you’re doing to prepare these sellers in the timeline and the emotional conversations and whatnot. You work hard, you put a lot of hours into the business, you do a lot of marketing. I’ve seen your work on LinkedIn, and it seems like a lot of those videos that you do are presented towards client. You guys have built up a big organization and I think you have pretty good, successful, organic growth, although you and I have never talked about this. So how do you calculate up what’s the difference between the organic growth and the success that you could be having with organic growth compared to going and speaking to a seller for 60 to 90 minutes on a deal that might not actually go through? How do you balance that desire for practice acquisitions, or what did you find worked well for you? Is a practice acquisition worth it, compared to just focusing on that organic growth, and how do you balance those two?

Scott:

Man, that’s an awesome question. I had a young man in here this past week, and he’s taking over his dad’s business. It’s not in our industry, and I’ve known him for a long time, and he wanted to ask me some questions. He came in and he asked me several questions, and one of the things he talked about was growing his dad’s business. I asked him the question, I said, “Well, why do you want to grow the business?” He was talking about growing it outside of the area that it’s in. He said, “My dad’s really focused locally, and I feel like he’s done an amazing job, but we can make it bigger. I really believe it could be bigger.” I said, “Well, what do you think making it bigger will do for you?” He goes, “Well, it’ll make us more money. It’ll make the business more successful.” I said, “You know, if we just use a simple analogy, like $100 a month, right? If I want to save $100 a month and invest it, eventually, long term, that really pays off. In the short term, I have 100 less dollars in my pocket to spend, and there is a trade-off.”

            So we have to really evaluate the trade-off between what I call positive growth and forced growth. Forced growth is different. That’s growing just to grow. That’s looking at, “Hey, I want to be bigger, I want to make Freedom Street huge, and I want to do this.” It’s about size. It’s quality over quantity, in my opinion. I think the true value is … The specific answer to your question, Aaron, is we have infrastructure in our business and our model, and we’ve built systems and processes that allow our team to highly focus on the infrastructure and the organic growth, all while a couple of us are developing and working strategically from an operations standpoint on the vision of growth and what that looks like.

            So I spend a significant amount of time doing videos on clients, but that’s also catered towards the advisors. The advisors that choose us, one of the things that keeps advisors from actually selling their practice is not knowing what you’re actually going to be doing. So by catering and staying in the client positions that we’re in and organically growing and doing the things that we do, the advisor in Charlotte that we purchased, we were one of 35 companies that he was interviewing.

Mike:

Wow.

Scott:

Of the 35 companies he interviewed, he narrowed it down to three, and he did face-to-face visits with those three. When he chose us, he told us that there were three things that stood out significantly. Number one, we were not within 10 years of his age. This person was 78, 79 years old, so we were not 68 to 70. That’s the first thing. The second thing was we were not just a business model with one or two people, that there was actually infrastructure with something beyond me as the lead advisor, per se, okay? That was very nerve-wracking to him, that if he was going to be investing in passing on his clients to be served, there had to be another step, there had to be an infrastructure behind that.

            And third was we were the only one of the multiple companies that actually showed him what and how we would do it. So by showing what the relationship with the client was like, by showing him how our investment management models work together, how we leverage systems like Riskalyze to understand the client’s perspective and their risk and we identify an IPS and we go through this process, this provided both the advisor and the future client a pathway to success. Most of them answered the question, when he said, “How will you do this,” “Oh, me and Suzy have been running a great practice for 27 years, and we know clients, and we understand.” And those practices are awesome. I’m not criticizing that in any capacity. Those are the meat and potatoes of our industry. But that’s not a process, that’s not a system, and that’s not something that I can feel comfortable with if I’m turning my practice over to you.

            So the organic growth argument versus the inorganic growth is really about, I think, leveraging both. You have to continue to grow as a practice, and when you purchase the practice, the other objective is to now organically grow that practice in that market. So we execute upon those things, but a lot of those videos catered towards clients are also catered towards the advisors to see how we do business, why we still put the client first, because a lot of the business that are aggregating may not be able to show you how they put the client first as well as I think we spend the time to do.

Mike:

I think that’s really smart. The videos, as you say, they seem to be designed for one audience, but they are broadcasting to anyone who wants to see it, “This is the culture. This is how we do business.” I’m a huge fan of online video and audio, obviously. The thing that I’ve often said is, “Look, there’s that old saying that people do business with those they know, like, and trust.” But there’s two things missing there, right? There is familiarity, number one. I can know you like I trust you, but if I haven’t seen you in 10 years, I’m not that familiar with you. Do I really know you anymore? I kind of know you and stuff might’ve changed, but seeing you frequently in my stream, hearing your voice, seeing your face, it makes me comfortable. That familiarity just breeds comfort. It’s how we make friends. It’s how we build relationships.

            And then the last one is competence. I got to know you’re good at what you do, right? Show me you know your stuff. So, again, I can know you, like you, trust you, I can see you all the time, but if I have no idea how good of a driver you are, you’re not getting the keys to my car to take it for a rip. So I have to feel that you know what you’re doing, and that’s one of the things that I notice in the videos. I went and previewed a few of your videos. It really comes through. You know how to do this, you know how to treat clients, you know how to talk to clients. You have a good bedside manner, if you will. You make me feel comfortable when you see you in the screen. Those things are really, really important.

Scott:

But if you know how to talk to clients, Mike, you know how to talk to advisors. Advisors just often don’t put ourselves in the side of being the client. It’s obvious, right? We go home and the last thing we want to do is talk about money, the last thing you want to do is deal with something you deal with all day long. But we’re also in a pretty male-dominated industry, and so the other interesting thing is when you do a ton of videos, what you learn is I have so many guys that I know on major boards, big executives, they’ll never like, share, or acknowledge a single thing they’ve ever seen, like it’s a weakness for men to actually say I like something another guy is doing, right?

Mike:

That’s funny.

Scott:

And yet they will come up to me on the golf course or in a family dinner or something and say, “Oh, man, I love that video you did on financial mistakes and sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. I showed that to my kids.” They’ll give it to you one-on-one, but they won’t do it on social media.

Mike:

Interesting.

Scott:

So, to your point, that familiarity, it’s actually being built without any acknowledgement, but those things are something in our industry that, yeah, our industry is expanding, we are obviously creating more diversity. Hopefully, practices are also focusing on the diversity of the marketplace, the people, the people that are investing today. Not everybody is the same. But the familiarity that you’re talking about is something that that’s exactly why we do the videos. It’s exactly why we do podcasts like this, is because we need people to know, like, and trust us, but they need to get a feel for us prior because that’s how people do business today.

Mike:

Love it, love it. That little thing you just mentioned about how some people don’t like or engage or comment with things but you will hear from them at some point in time, those people are called lurkers, right? There’s lots of people on social media and they’re just kind of lurking there, and that’s one of the things we try to encourage people a lot, is, “Hey, look, just because you don’t see all this interaction doesn’t mean people aren’t paying attention and listening and consuming your product.” By the way, sometimes we’ll post a video of a little summary of a podcast, right, and that video will get hundreds and hundreds of views and the podcast might’ve only got 300 listens or something like that. People are getting it also through the summary. They’re consuming the content. So don’t read into all the numbers that they have to be massive. Sometimes, you’re hitting exactly who you need to hit at the right time. So really, really cool stuff.

            While we’re on this relationship stuff and how important it is, how do you go about discovering and vetting a potential partner for fit? I think that fit, as you mentioned, obviously, they’re evaluating you. You mentioned the advisor who was interviewing 35, got down to three, and chose you. So they’re obviously evaluating for fit. But I would imagine you’re not just sending out, “Hey, we’re interested,” to every practice that’s for sale, right? You must have some lens and some filter that you go through as well before you even decide, “Yeah, this is worth pursuing.” How do you go about that?

Scott:

So that’s a great question. We absolutely do, and we have turned down several opportunities that it didn’t feel right. Some of the things that feel right to us, so what are the things we’re looking for? Some of the things that we’re looking for are, when we started Freedom Street, I really wanted to have a culture and a company that believed in something bigger than themselves, that had a better together mentality, that understood teamwork. It’s very difficult to go into a succession or an acquisition where the other individual has never played on a team or doesn’t understand any level of infrastructure and other people picking up where you left off. There’s a song by Jack Johnson we reference all the time called Better Together that I love because we’re really better off together when we’re leveraging the strengths.

            I learned a ton from the advisor in Charlotte, as I think he learned from us. We’d get in appointments together, and it was just awesome. When we did appointments together, he might be arguing or frustrated outside before we went in because we were presenting something different than he was comfortable with at times, but at the same time, we went in and he was aligned, and he walked out of that, we were never more aligned than those moments. That’s really identifying all those things we talked a little bit about earlier. What is their life like? What is their family life like? What is their background? Do they have something that they’re putting more energy into than the business in places? Are they active? Are they healthy? Are they interested in something? Do they really appreciate our practice? Or are we just a dollar figure for them?

            I’m not in this to just do money transactions. That is not what we’re looking to do, and so if someone’s too caught up in the finer details of just the dollars and cents and it’s not about the other stuff, the actual transition, which is pretty empowering and important, what does that look like, how likely are we to retain together where we win together. These are all things that we’re looking for. And some of the things that turn us off are the very things that the business is all they talk about, there is nothing else, the family life is dead, there’s no real legacy beyond the impact of the business. We either want to coach them and help them find some of that because I think there’s an opportunity for that and that’s something we enjoy doing, or we want to identify it’s not a good fit.

            But most people are coachable, and they need it. It’s just advisors have this mentality because we’ve been doing it so long that the clients really need me, and getting someone to shift the mindset from me to us is something that has to happen. That is what will make it successful. Me is no longer me when you sell the practice, it’s us, and how can we get there quicker. That’s the challenge and something that will create a high level of success if done properly.

Mike:

I love that. Aaron actually teed up this question yesterday when we were having a prep call for this podcast. He mentioned navigating from the solo advisor mindset to the business owner mindset as something that you’ve done incredibly successful. It’s the reason why you’re building a business, you talk about process, you talk about your team a lot. That’s a big leap that not every advisor makes, and it sounds like you guys are relatively successful at helping the advisors you acquire make that leap, like, okay, you’ve sold your business, and I’m not sure what the structure looks like afterwards, if they’re able to maintain a small ownership position or if it’s just a full transition out or something of that nature. But getting them to make that transition, we’re in a business now. As you said, it’s not me, it’s us. That’s really interesting. How did you personally make that mental shift because not every advisor gets there?

Scott:

The solo practitioner to the business mentality, right?

Mike:

Yeah, yeah.

Scott:

Yeah. There’s a lot of answers to this, and I’ll start with one of the most important, and that is your life experiences and your previous training and the company I worked for prior, I spent a lot of time in leadership roles at Edward Jones where I was prior. I had the pleasure of working with new advisors and to be a performance leader in charge of 50, 60 advisors at all levels, the top producers to the smaller producers. I led recruiting efforts in certain capacities. These were all mostly volunteer level jobs that will engage more partnership down the line, but it’s unbelievable training that I received by being able to work with advisors from the business perspective.

            The second thing I can say is it was about four to five years in and I said, “I have got to figure out a way to run my business like a business. I cannot be running this just like the advisor that I’ve grown into. I got to know more.” So I spent all my time and energy studying, learning business, and what you learned really quickly is the next big benefit, and that’s infrastructure and teamwork. It’s not me. I’m just blessed to surround myself with people that are smarter, stronger, better than me in almost every level. By being able to, what I tell my team all the time, play chess and not checkers … When you play checkers, you’re always looking at the next move. Most people live in this world making the next move and not thinking through the next 10.

            I’ve always been thinking through 10, and it’s been a positive and a negative in my life. When you’re 10 rounds in front, you have to focus a lot on presence. You’ve got to come back sometimes and say, “Wow, what a great day today is. What a great moment I’m in right now,” not, “Oh my gosh, if we could do this, then we could definitely do that.” So thinking in the mindset of what I call chess, surrounding myself and continuing to hire people that are better, stronger, smarter, have more experience, and then being open-minded enough to learn from every single practice that we’ve taken on. Every affiliate, every acquisition, any succession deals we’ve done, we learned from all of them. To me, that’s the difference, is that I don’t have all the best ideas. I’ve got a pathway that I think will help us grow, and it’s everybody surrounding us and walking with me that’s making this actually work. We’re growing and learning and pivoting every single day.

Mike:

I really appreciate you spending the time with us today. I know we only have a few more minutes with you, and I want to be conscious of the time. But one thing we did skip over is that you have worked with SkyView on several of your acquisitions. I’m not sure if you had previous acquisitions in which you didn’t work with SkyView or didn’t use financing, but I wanted to just spend at least 60 seconds or two minutes there on how financing has helped you with these deals. How do you think it’s changing the landscape for acquisitions in this space?

Scott:

Yeah. I love the question, and we probably should’ve started with it because SkyView has been so amazing to us. But it’s no different than what we’ve been talking about the whole time. This business is all about relationships, finding people you trust, and then creating this group of advisory board members, almost, that are helping you do and execute upon your vision, right? SkyView not only does the part that they’re supposed to do. They not only do the financial benefit and bring it to the table, but they, a., make it easier by allowing it to be process-driven, b., they talk through the pros and cons with you and actually serve as an advisor and a trusted contact, somebody that we can actually vet different ideas with. They connect us to other industry leaders, so as we grow … I’m still a baby in this business, man, whether I’ve been doing it a couple decades or not. On this side of the table, I’m a baby. I’m growing. I’m learning. It’s groups like SkyView that are helping us to grow, and we really value and appreciate that relationship. It goes beyond the financing.

            We have worked with other groups, and some of them have been really good, but not to the level that we get in service, the relationship-driven mentality, and really just the partnership. When we founded Freedom Street Partners, freedom was all about the freedom of being able … Whether it’s financial freedom, it’s life’s freedom, it’s the freedom we have in this country that not every place in the world has, it’s amazing to us. The street was bringing Wall Street to main street and simplifying the things that everybody makes complex. And there was a partnership attribute, the partnership between us and our clients, us and our partners, and us and the partners we work with, like SkyView, in the industry. To me, that’s what Aaron and the team really symbolize to us, is really a partnership.

Mike:

I love it. I love it. Fantastic answer. Aaron, anything to add? What’s it like working with Scott Danner and the Freedom Street Partners team?

Aaron:

Well, we’ve obviously worked with Scott on a few deals, and Scott kind of hit it on the head. It’s always hard to convey when you’re working with clients, but I feel like we genuinely believe this, which is that this is a relationship business. SkyView’s out and we are working with our clients to help them further their business. So we really appreciate these clients like Scott who collaborate, who are open to our ideas, who open up to trust, let us do our work. We’ve enjoyed working with these guys because they are respectful, they’re prompt, they’re thorough, and they run a really good business. What we’ve been able to do is collaborate, help them learn how to be commercial borrowers and continue to grow upon that, and it’s just like advisors working with clients that they really like.

            When someone has a fun personality and they appreciate the work you’re doing and vice versa, that mutual respect is really fun. I talk about mutual respect all the time when we’re working with buyers and sellers and having that mutual respect together. It’s the same we have it in our business. I think mutual respect and that kindness and that gratitude really makes it fun and it makes it a super enjoyable business at the end of the week to wrap up and have these fun client relationships.

Scott:

Yeah, Aaron, one thing I’ll add, Mike, just to wrap it up on top of that, a little cherry on top, is that I think what SkyView is doing is similar to what we’re doing, and that is we want to genuinely help advisors find their next chapter. It doesn’t always end with us. It’s not always us. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not putting good information out there, guiding people that don’t end up utilizing us. Our objective is for the industry to be stronger, for us to really make waves in an industry that sometimes gets caught up in the bad stuff, and we’re not. We’re trying to help people find the best path forward, and groups like us and SkyView, I think, stand out amongst people that really we want to do what’s in the best interest of our clients, whether that’s the advisors we’re serving or the very clients we serve every day as investment advisors and financial planners and everything that our team does.

Mike:

Fantastic. That is a great cherry on top to wrap us up. Well, Aaron, of course, Scott, real pleasure having you both on the show. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a ton, which is always the little side benefit for me, right? I get to do this, and I learn a ton over the process. Apparently, for people who weren’t aware at the beginning of our little intro there, before we started recording, I’ve got to get a Peloton because I’m the only man in existence apparently that doesn’t have one. So I’ve got to join you guys out on the virtual road. Thanks, guys.

Scott:

You do. Yes.

Aaron:

We’ll see you on the bike, Mike.

Mike:

See you, guys.

Scott:

All right. We’ll look forward to seeing you. Thanks for having us.

Aaron:

Thanks.

Mike:

Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Advisor Financing Forum podcast. It’s always so great to have you with us every week. As I mentioned earlier, if you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest for a future episode, please send it to podcast@skyview.com. And, by the way, if you are in the process of selling your business to another advisor, Aaron Hasler and I would love to chat with you and see if you’d be willing to join us in a future episode in this series. Your experience and your perspective would be so informative and helpful to others who may be embarking on a similar journey in their future.

            Speaking of sharing tales from the journey, huge thanks to Scott Danner of Freedom Street Partners for being so generous with his time and wisdom. We’re so grateful for his willingness to join us and share his story. Next week on the show, Nick Arellano of Your Legacy Partners, a boutique M&A advisory firm based in Hermosa Beach, California, is joining us for a deep dive on best practices for selling an RIA business. You aren’t going to want to miss that episode, so make sure you click that subscribe button on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you like to get your podcast jam on. Okay, that’s about it for today. Please make sure you stay safe, wear your mask, keep your distance, and be nice to each other, okay? We will see you next time on The Advisor Financing Forum. See you. Bye.

Going through old stuff on a rainy day, I found an old card that was so timely and so interesting to me. As a young child, at 13, I was moving to a different city, different neighborhood, and completely different school – where I had to make all new friends. It was a really frustrating time for me.

I found a note from my mother that I kept for all these years, and really wanted to share the important message that she shared with me.

The Life-Changing Letter

As a 13-year-old, I probably just tucked it under a pillow or threw it in the bottom of a drawer. I knew that it mattered, but I didn’t really listen and didn’t really think it through. Looking back, these are things that I’ve definitely grown on – and are things that, in my 40s, I’m able to honestly look back appreciate her life-changing words.

She began by saying “Scott, I know it’s a challenging time for you. You have a lot of fun and exciting things ahead of you, but you also have some challenges – and how you handle those challenges is going to be key”.  There were a couple of things she wanted me to remember:

1. Your words matter.

How you say things really matters. Having a direct and sometimes dominant personality, I tend to say things straight and to the point – which can sometimes be too direct and quite hurtful.

Your words do matter. Sometimes you don’t even know your words matter until you realize that you matter. When you’re standing in front of a room leading people, whether you’re a teacher, a coach, an advisor, or whatever it is that you’re doing – when you say things, they matter. When you say things to your family, they matter.

We all find ourselves saying things we probably wish we hadn’t said around the people we love most, and we have to backtrack a little bit, because words do matter.

We Choose How to React to Hurtful Words

We probably all teach our kids “sticks and stones” because words can be hurtful. But we can also choose how we receive those words. The reality is, saying words that we don’t mean just because we’re trying to prove a point are not effective strategies. In business, it’s even more important – because when you matter, your words matter so much more. When we’re dealing with service-related things in our company, or we’re talking to other staff members, how we say things can be just as important as what we’re saying.

Words are Engraved Forever

It’s important to remember that our words matter everywhere, even when we’re typing them out, or texting them. We see this on social media all the time – people say things that they’d never say to someone’s face, which is so shocking. I would never say something on social media that I wouldn’t say, out in public or to the person as an individual.

These are lessons that that our kids have to realize. All it takes is one quick argument with a with a girlfriend, boyfriend, or friend that they’re mad at, and their words are engraved forever.

Words may matter more now than they ever have before, because they’re saved. When we think about how we treat other people as we communicate with them, as we go through business and life, thinking about what we want to say before saying it can make us more effective, and efficient. Words are something that makes a big difference.

2. Blaming others is never the solution.

If you go through life blaming others for anything and everything, you’ll be very unhappy in life. Blaming others doesn’t get you anywhere. Figure out what you can control, get control of it, and work through it. Blame – and nothing gets anything accomplished.

You don’t become better at your job by blaming someone for not helping you get there or not giving you a better opportunity. You don’t get better at being a husband or a wife, or being a better father or mother, by not learning from your own mistakes.

 We get better when we when we work on perfecting the words that come out of our mouth – and when we stop self-talking and blaming others.

3. Understand other people, and their personalities.

Understanding how other people receive information and their personalities makes us better teammates, especially in the company we work with. Understanding each other as humans can help us better communicate with each other at work.

 Part of that is just getting to know each other better – and part of it is learning more about their strengths and blind spots.

As a 13 year old boy, one of my blind spots is probably still a blind spot for me today. I’ve become good with words, in part because I’ve spent a lot of time failing at them. I’ve spent a lot of time saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and by understanding and learning how to build from that: how to get better, how to deliver a message cleaner, how to say something that’s direct, but not hurtful or too strong.

Some people might hold things in and not say what’s on their mind, which can be just as tough and as hard in a communication, whether at work, at home, or anywhere. Not saying something can be powerful as well. The most important part is:

• Finding what we do well.
• Finding how we do it, and growing from it.
• Developing that strength.

We always have opportunities to continue learning from and growing from failures, and there are many that can come from words. Our words, and how you say things absolutely matters.

I thank my mom for taking the time to give me that card. I really should probably apologize, because whatever I did probably warranted that letter. What a truly great lesson I learned from it.  Words matter. Blaming others doesn’t help us get anywhere. So, thanks, Mom. Hopefully, we could all continue learning these important lessons and grow more as humans and in the workplace.

The definition of a successful life is one where you are happy with the outcomes you’re achieving – financially, personally, and professionally. The difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, is often a small line.

Do you consider the obstacles that come into your path as roadblocks or as opportunities? Even in this time of crisis, where financial setbacks make some people lose hope, you can choose another way.

Keep reading to find out how.

The Will to Win

Winning in life is a lot like winning in professional sports; the difference between a great player and a mediocre one is not their talent alone, and sometimes not even work ethic. The key is their will to win – the vision that they focus on every single day when they put effort into achieving their goals.

A Winner’s Mindset: Find Your Opportunities

Yes, times are tough. In times of crisis, we are all faced with what may seem like setbacks and challenges. But are you actually open to the opportunities that are available to you?

Whether you view something as a setback, or a challenge will determine if you are open to the opportunity that is available to you. The distinction that lets you see these “setbacks” as opportunities is a winner’s mindset:

 Opportunities to grow.

 Opportunities to learn.

 Opportunities to build.

 Opportunities to innovate.

As an advisor to many people over the years, I’ve seen the distinct differences that people with a winner’s mindset have. One of the most obvious, is that winners see opportunities – and are quicker to change course when something blocks their path.

 How to Develop a Winner’s Mindset

People with a winner’s mindset have a long-term view of the game. They look at something like this crisis and immediately ask how they can chart a new course:

• It’s not a matter of being born with it.  I’ve helped many people develop a winner’s mindset by reevaluating their circumstances to get themselves out of negative loops of hopelessness when setbacks occur.
• It’s a muscle that will grow stronger over time. Muscles often need stress and exercise in order to become stronger. The current world we live is ripe with opportunities to flex your winner’s mindset and create a stronger ability to deal with the reality of circumstances – and push ahead towards your dreams. A winner’s mindset can be cultivated with practice and guidance.
• Develop a strategy. While having a winner’s mindset doesn’t mean there won’t be complications, barriers, or difficulties while achieving your goals, it means that despite those hurdles you’ve developed a strategy to move forward. A strategic plan takes into account the variables of life – and has contingencies that still allow you to soldier on towards the life you’re building for yourself.

Build a Strong Team

We are all given a choice to aspire to a life of financial freedom, and to put in the mindset work to stay on that path, no matter what happens. Thankfully, though, it doesn’t have to be a lonely journey.

Just like in professional sports, you’ll often find that a team is stronger than the sum of its parts. Building your financial dream team is easy – and I’m prepared to guide you in optimizing all the opportunities we currently have in front of us, and in finding a way to win amidst this crisis and any future ones.