ChrisNotes

Business Development for Advisors

Ever feel like you have too much to read?  How bad am I?  I pick up a book I recently read to write some ChrisNotes and I realize, geez, I better read this again!

So today we go with a summary.  Here are Five Keys to Business Development:

1. Work so that you get paid for the results you create, not how much time you put in.
2. Live the idea that you are not a Professional Advisor, but you are an Entrepreneur with a specialty in your professional area.
3. Put methods and processes into place that run the business side of your office.
4. Commit to building a dependable, respectable network of friends and contacts who are growing, future oriented people and are achieving tremendous results in their lives.
5. Be determined to improve your business skills:  Selling, Negotiating, Delegating, and Measuring Results (Accounting).

  Strategic Coach will help you with Keys 1-2-3.  Please be sure to say I referred you.  I get free books and once I get 10 people in the program, I get a big discount.  :) 

The Middle Class Millionaire

I read The Middle Class Millionaire by Lewis Schiff and Russ Alan Prince in three hours on the flight back from Chicago last week.  Prince has to be the most quoted author by financial services people there is when they want to make the point that people should listen to them.

Prince's gig is to survey wealthy people and write books about his findings.  Here, he and Schiff identify a demographic that unitl now has been un-labeled.  The Boomers and X and Y Genners that have a net worth between $1MM and $10MM, yet live like middle class people. 

Well, not exactly like the middle class, because MCMs do spend a lot to support their lifestyles.  According to the book, they set the trends for the rest of America.  Their buying habits drives the economy.

A smart reader will note that in order to become a MCM, all you have to do is adopt the habits that this research turned up and maybe, one day, you will be part of the 8% of the population, too.

1. Work hard-  70-80 hours per week.  (I, for one, will take a different approach!)
2. Maintain a dependable network. (Couldn't agree more)
3. Build equity.  (Someone will become a MCM as a result of your work, why not you?)
4. Commit to improving your business skills: Negotiating and Measuring results, in particular.

There may be one or two more, I have to go back, first book I read with my new Speed Reading technique.  More on that, later.  :)