As Stephen Covey said, “If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.” 

Back in the day, business strategists focused on long-term plans. Some strategists even made 20-year plans! Instead, business strategists now concentrate on flexibility and adaptability in uncertain times.

A great example was the swift shift to online meetings during the Covid pandemic. As part of this forced experiment, we discovered that businesspeople preferred seeing their colleagues with real-home backdrops instead of professionally designed scenes. Real-home backgrounds gave us insight into colleagues’ lives and assisted in creating empathy and more personable relationships, which are far more likely to last.

Here are three tactics for financial advisors to manage uncertainty:

  1. Automate functions in your business

As we all know, time is money, and many advisory businesses’ budgets are strained because of rising inflation and increasing compliance costs. I’ve worked with many small to medium-sized financial planning businesses, and two of the various challenges they all seem to face are:

  • Limited marketing budgets
  • Not having enough time to craft good content to use as newsletters and website posts that can be used on social media

Gladly, these challenges can be overcome by automation. One example is FinDotNews – a new venture I’m proud to be associated with – which sends a monthly client newsletter on your behalf. FinDotNews differs from other suppliers in that you can select articles from a large and growing database of professionally written articles. And it’s incredibly affordable.

There are other functions that advisors can automate, including personalising your service. For instance, why not use birthdays as a trigger for client portfolio reviews rather than Living Annuity review dates? Giving a client a birthday card or gift will assist in developing a rapport which may lead to additional referrals.

  1. Become increasingly aware of your environment

Think back to a moment when a problem seemingly resolved itself. Now think a little more carefully: did the problem resolve itself, or was it your focus on the issue and your clear goals that made the difference? Chances are you found the right tech or people and made everything come together.

A part of your brain called the RAS – reticular activating system – determines what you notice in the world. For example, setting a goal and becoming highly aware of it affects your emotions and triggers the RAS. In this state, your brain becomes incredibly acute at noticing solutions that could help you move forward, and uncertainty vanishes. It’s about stepping back from the daily grind and appreciating the bigger picture.

  1. Automate yourself

The only way you can create certainty is by establishing healthy rituals. It’s a manner of automating yourself.

Healthy rituals are the little things we do daily that provide a clear route to realising the desired results. You could watch a business-related podcast or webinar daily instead of fixating on all the bad global news, for example. Of course, it goes without saying that we should exercise routinely, rest and keep up with friends.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time

Suppose you are unhappy with the status quo of your financial planning business and feel that it’s all just a massive challenge. In this state of mind, you’re never going to get anywhere. What you need to do is break goals down into bite-sized pieces. Automate or outsource functions to free up your time to focus on the core functions such as liaising with your DFM, taking their advice and making the required changes to your client’s portfolios. You start seeing solutions instead of problems only once you break them down.

Uncertainty need not devastate you.

External events don’t have to define your reaction to uncertain times.

Hopefully, these tips have gone a little way towards assisting you in creating certainty.

To automate content creation and regular newsletters to clients, click HERE or drop me a line at linda@fincommunications.com

Regards

Linda