What Airplane Oxygen Masks Can Teach You About Your FP Business Model

Picture this…

You’ve just stowed your bag into the overhead locker and you’re squeezing your way past the stranger in the aisle into your seat – struggling to find the right end of the seat belt buckle…

Just as you get settled and press play on your chosen movie, the annoying flight attendant interrupts and starts going thru the boring safety instructions you’ve heard a hundred times before.

You know the ‘drill’ so well that you recite it along with her in your head…

“In the unlikely event of a drop in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop down from the unit above you.

Secure YOUR mask tightly by pulling on the straps, and once you’ve done that, you may assist children and old people…”

So, what does this have to do with your FP biz?

Well, most financial planners spend the majority of their time frantically fitting everybody else’s mask – but their own!

When a client needs help, we jump in and take up the slack.

When a team member is stuck, we alleviate the problem for them.

When something needs to be done, it’s just quicker and easier to do it ‘myself’.

And every time you lose focus on the core things that you SHOULD be focused on and start to do every other thing that needs to be done (or fail to delegate effectively…), it creates a massive – cumulative – knock on effect.

The work that you were supposed to be doing just gets pushed to the side and builds up – to a point where it becomes overwhelming… simply because you were so focused on making sure everyone else’s mask was fitted and that they were ‘OK’!

Truth is that if you don’t step back and put on your own mask first, it’s not a sustainable way to grow an FP biz and you’ll end up with what I call ‘the 3 OUTS’:

Maxed OUT

Stressed OUT; and

Burnt OUT

It’s the trifecta of bad for a busy financial planner and you need to avoid it like the plague. Otherwise, you won’t be around long enough to help ‘client Fred’ or the hundreds of others that want a piece of you.

At Blackwing Coaching Club, we do an exercise called ‘Building a LOVE/HATE Relationship with your business’.

We spend a little bit of time to get you clear on exactly what you SHOULD be doing as a professional financial planner. The things that you’re good at, give you energy and passion and activities that you love to do…

Things you LOVE:

Business growth

Client facing

Strategic planning

Relationship building

Income producing

High end financial planner work…

You know, the stuff you were put on this earth to do and the reason you got into financial planning in the first place.

And then we have a think about the stuff that you don’t enjoy so much or that you get caught up in or they end up ‘landing in your lap all the time’…

Admin

Follow ups

Emails

Making appointments

Chasing stuff

Ringing super funds of product providers

Opening the mail or photocopying… 😐.

Now don’t get me wrong – all of those things are important, and are critical parts of the smooth operation of your business…, but do YOU have to be the one doing them…?

I would like to propose that the answer is NO!

So, give yourself and the people around you the authority to say NO.

There are some core delegation strategies that go with this, but for now, I want you to recognize what you love and what you hate about your business, focus on the important stuff – and ditch the rest.

That way you’ll be making maximum use of your time, with minimal effort (or hours) and enjoy each and every day because you’re doing the work that matters (and makes money)!

The LOVE/HATE exercise takes about 10 minutes and is the starting point to freeing up your time and capacity.

If you’d like to run through it and see where you could improve, the link in this video will take you to my diary and I’m happy to walk you through process.

Let’s make a pact that you’ll do less of the ‘stuff’, and more of what’s important and see the difference that it makes.

That’s it for this edition of the Blackwing Boost Your Business Blog.

Until next time – buckle up and let’s get super-sonic, shall we?

Take good care.

Speak to you soon.