The One Standard That Will Transform Your Advisory Business

[00:00:00] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Management is a low standard as it comes to being a financial advisor or a financial planner. You, you start off thinking about me, how do, how do I get good at what I do? How do I add value to my clients? How do I build a book of business? And then once that business is established, it's how do I continue to add value?

[00:00:16] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: How do I grow my book? How do I grow my passive income, my recurring revenue at a And thinking about how do I serve my clients at the best level? And then you need a team to start to, syndicate your leverage out, right? Because obviously working more is not the answer. And especially if you think about the entirety of your life, you know, maybe at there's some point of your life where you get to run really, really fast and that's great and leverage that. as she was working with a client yesterday talking about that same thing you, he was reflecting on in his late thirties that there was a point in his twenties up to his. Very early thirties that, you know, he had tons of energy and he ran very, very fast and, and had less responsibility.

[00:00:54] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: And although he felt like a good, he had a good job doing that. and taking advantage of that, it's a reminder that we, we should be really aware of the season that we are in and to leverage the season that we're in and not trying to be somewhere else because, awareness of it is really, really important, but let's we grow our business and think about bringing people in.

[00:01:12] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: We think about them helping us deliver them, helping us like do some tasks to move that way and how do we manage the people in the team? How do we manage our clients? but I would offer that management essentially is a low standard and it's not a bad place to start, but we wanna move through that as quick as we can because people don't wanna be managed. bottom line is it's people and you can't manage people really, not effectively long term. You can only manage processes. That's okay because people wanna be led. and even if that's someone in your team that, of course you are paying to deliver a on, on task or deliver on being in the office.

[00:01:45] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: We wanna be careful how we set this up 'cause it makes a huge difference. Rather than paying someone for their time just to be there, which is a traditional old school model, I would offer that. We wanna think about not paying them for their time and then managing that. We wanna have to think about leading them by saying, okay, we want to have you come in and own a function.

[00:02:04] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: What function can is it that you can own? And it doesn't really matter what it is that they're doing, it's just defining what it is overall. So you might say, I have an assistant that comes in. And he or she, goodness. The first thing that drives me crazy is that if I could have someone manage my calendar, that meaning, like someone could book calls on my calendar, follow up, make sure meetings are prepped, make sure that, clients are getting the follow up, that would be a huge deal, you know?

[00:02:27] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: And then the next piece, of course is like, make sure that the business gets followed up on applications, get processed, service work is completed, but. Think of it from the mindset that's most important. This is your journey as the owner. Here again, we're talking about being an advisor that is an established advisor to a business owner. and the, and the sooner you can think about like a business owner, the sooner you can get through the next level or part where you're trying to scale through, wherever that might be. and so we should probably start by drawing a distinction, a definition as to what management versus leadership is.

[00:03:00] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Management is, is checking in. Management is making sure that tasks get done, assigning tasks, make sure they get done. Leadership is about assigning, ownership for delivery of overall results. And you can think about this just as a time bound, situation, right? And so like it's worth thinking about the hierarchy.

[00:03:19] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Of how it might look in any given business, right? And so if you can think about, okay, from the bottom up individual tasks together, complete a particular process, right? So it might be, okay, I've gotta fill out a, a new business application. If a new business application might have, okay, filling the application out itself.

[00:03:37] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: But you gotta think about, okay, well I've gotta request it. I've gotta make sure it's, I get that up from the detail I need from a client. I've gotta fill the thing out and I've gotta submit it, and I've gotta follow through and make sure it gets processed. That whole thing might have 10, 20 different specific tasks in it.

[00:03:50] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: If you put it down to a level which is a keystroke level, which might. a standard operating document might look like. And if you lay that together, the process of completing an onboarding for a client is altogether in that one process, right? So think about the chunks of that. And so as you are sharing and, teaching someone that you're gonna look at it from those individual tasks, but you don't wanna give it task by touch.

[00:04:12] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: I just wanna think about, okay, overall this person, you might hire them for a function of owning all new client business. New client business, new client onboarding. and the result might be that, is to know how many clients were coming in and all client new business gets pro processed by a certain amount of time.

[00:04:31] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: And that will be a success for that role. So that's the top down approach. The bottom up approach is, which is how we're gonna piece it together. So for that role to deliver that outcome, it might be, you might call that, something like director of new business. and whether that person is really, really, really established in a role or they're new to that role and they're really figuring out from that task level up.

[00:04:51] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: I would still call it that and think of it like that, at least as if that person is stepping into that role. This is what we're, this is what you're coming in to do, and we'll learn as we go through it. That way. From the start, that person is thinking, okay, cool. This is the function that I'm in. This is the role that I'm playing here, and the role success in this role is this.

[00:05:09] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Otherwise, what will happen is that every time they complete a task, no matter how good they are at completing a task, they come back to you asking for more or the next steps. what might it be? I just had an example yesterday from a advisor where. His assistant office manager of 12 years or so came back to him to ask him this very specific question about something that a client submitted, whether it required a tax form or not.

[00:05:31] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: And so the example was really perfect because it was a very small, relatively speaking, something that happened through the day, but really telling in terms of like how that person thought about what their role was. And so like it's worth having an escalation, framework. So, you know, ultimately that thing should come back to the expert, the planner and the advisor in this case, but also that person should have a, a Rolodex, as it were, like a framework to move through.

[00:05:56] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: In order that they can figure out what it is before they come back to him as well. Another quick example, right? Super simple. client of mine who has a new, assistant coming into his team that he's sharing and, uh, the assistant that is, partially retiring has a change to her email, signature and her email, outta office.

[00:06:14] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: And the email says to contact the lead advisor, and then secondarily the new person in the team. And so that sets up, the lead advisor for getting more of these phone calls in emails rather than directly to the new person and the team. And so thinking about it from the overall perspective of who's playing, what roles allows us to much quicker move through to the leadership focus, where you can focus on the big picture and set the strategy.

[00:06:38] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Because bottom line, as a business owner, the jobs that you can't share, the ownership. And lemme be clear, because we often talk about delegation and whilst that's a useful framework to think through, delegation is much more often about task delegating. That's come terms how we, think about it. You do this thing, I would share that we wanna think about ownership, transformation, ownership, transferring.

[00:07:04] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Right? And so rather than saying, okay, you do this task, we say I'm transferring the ownership of this thing to you because as the business owner and the lead advisor and. The things that you only, that you can do are set the strategy for your business and show up for your most important clients.

[00:07:20] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: Everything else, at least to a high level, can be moved to someone else. and aspirationally that's how we wanna think about it in order that you can become a better leader to have the right people in, in your company. And that's how you create a culture that persists. and it creates that situation where people look in and go, wow.

[00:07:38] nick_11_02-18-2026_092038: How do they do that? That's exactly where it starts.