Dont Shoot The Messenger

The Secret to Building a Limitless Advice Business with Stephanie Bogan

• Chris Ball • Season 1

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 58:58

What if the biggest thing holding your advice business back isn’t your strategy, but your mindset?

In this episode of Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Chris Ball sits down with Stephanie Bogan, founder of Limitless Advisor Coaching, to explore how financial advisers can build more profitable businesses without sacrificing their time, freedom or personal lives.

Stephanie has spent more than 30 years helping advisers transform the way they think, work and grow. After building her first consulting firm at just 24 and later selling it for seven figures, she went on to help shape the practice management strategies used by thousands of advisers across the United States.

If you’re a financial adviser, business owner or ambitious professional who wants to achieve more without allowing work to consume your life, this episode is for you.


If you want to see what life in Hoxton Wealth is like, please visit:  / @hoxtonlife 

For more information on Hoxton Wealth careers, please https://www.careers-page.com/hoxtonwealth.com

For my videos by Chris, please visit his Youtube:  ⁨@ChrisBallHoxton⁩  

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01

So, welcome to another episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger. And today, my guest is Stephanie Bogan. She coaches her leaders program alongside Michael Gitz. So, welcome and really great to have you on board. What made you start your very own uh consulting for blind optimism? Clearly, you're passionate about it. You're 24, but like, and you've been working in someone else's practice. Did you know anything about running, you know, your own business?

SPEAKER_03

And my list, Chris, it went from this to this to this. I would watch someone give him an objection or quote the fee, and he would like tense up. I don't know much, but I know you can't do that.

SPEAKER_01

How many people actually do that?

SPEAKER_03

I've coached Michael Kitz's for seven years. Yeah. He's he's 10x'd twice.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

So welcome to another episode of Don't Shoot the Messenger. And today my guest is Stephanie Bogan. Uh Stephanie built a consulting firm from scratch at 24, sold it 12 years later for seven figures, and walked away from the corporate ladder a bit later. She spent years building uh the practice management playbook that shaped how thousands of American financial planners and advisors run their businesses, first through her own firm, then as an SVP of training and client experience at United Capital, where the model she helped build was eventually adopted industry-wide. And as we know, United Capital was subsequently uh acquired by Goldman Sachs, which is pretty cool. Today she's the founder of Limitless Advisor Coaching, where she works with advisors at firm level, uh, advisors and at uh and at firm level, and she's the author of The Power of Practice Management, and she coaches her leaders program alongside Michael Gitz. So welcome and really great to have you on board.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, thanks, Chris. That's a pleasure to be here.

Blind Optimism And The First Leap

SPEAKER_01

So let's go back to 24, which I I I can't imagine that long ago. What made you start your very own uh consulting firm?

SPEAKER_02

Uh blind optimism.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, literally, most people go out and get decades of experience and then teach. I got a few years of experience and thought, hey, why not? Um, honestly, the answer is uh a commute. I uh was the director of marketing and operations in a state planning firm that worked in the ultra-high network space, which was an incredible. I had been in an international law firm and then I just looked around and saw that the grinding hours and stress was not for me. Uh, and I'd been commuting to downtown LA 45 minutes from Pasadena. So I was a jumped ship, right? Course career, became the director of marketing and operations, and I had been there for a couple of years and had transformed that practice. I started, it gets worse, right? I started there when I was 21.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_03

And they were hiring for an office manager, and there were three people, and I'm like, there are three people in this office, there's nothing to manage. You need a director of marketing because at 21, I knew so much about marketing. Um, I I did know a bit. I worked under a Rainmaker and I had kind of this like just pension or into pinchant or intuition for it. Um, so so many of the strategies that I deploy now, I literally started in my 20s working in this practice.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Right? Our referral, we have this thing called the referral follow-up, right? We have a three-step process, only three steps, right? We're not chasing dead bodies to the finish line.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It's wildly effective at getting people off the fence, right? Yes, no, let's move forward. And the reason that I created that was I was sitting on the phone every single morning. Hi, it's Stephanie from Galen's office. I just wanted to follow up and see if, hey, could we have a little more time? Hey, we got to put a roof on the house. Hey, mom, right? And I was just like, these people like this is their life. This is important. They are not making decisions. And my list, Chris, it went from this to this to this. The principal that I worked with was amazing at brilliant technically, deep client care, awful at sales. I mean, like, I was 21 looking at this, like I was like, oh, you gotta stop. You cannot be, ooh, I was like, oh, don't like I would I would watch someone give him an objection or quote the fee, and he would like tense up. And I was like, I don't know much, but I know you can't do that. Um so in my infinite wisdom at 21, I was like, there has to be a better way. And I think that's the underlying kismet that led to everything, is I was like, there's just got to be a better way. So let's went from this to this to this. And one morning I came in and I was just like, this is horse pucky. I can't care more about these people's lives than they do. They have plenty of money. Why will that they not make a decision? And then it hit me because I let them not make a decision. I didn't give them a moment of clarity where I, in the best of ways, not only is our job to give people the information they need to make good choices, it's our job to give them a clear opportunity to make one, not sell them, not control them, not persuade them the opportunity to make a choice about what they feel is best for their financial life and to maintain our dignity and respect for ourselves if they say no.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It has nothing to do with us personally. It might be our value prop, it might be our presentation, but often it's just the prospect isn't aligned. They don't see value the way that you do. And why would you spend one ounce of your energy trying to convince somebody who doesn't get it to get it? Because it's always going to be the dynamic versus saying, okay, great, I wish you well, and going using that energy to find a client who is motivated, able to see the value, and happy to pay you. So I just decided there was no more of that. We came up with a three-step follow-up process where we follow up three times. There's a very clear script each time. Each time we tell them when we're following up and what's next. And the last time we're like, hey, we understand that you're busy and you have a lot on your plate. These were the goals you shared with us. When you're ready, we'll be happy to, when you're ready to work on them, we're happy to be here for you. And we don't want to be a pest. So here's our contact information. If at any point we can be of value to you and your family, please feel free to preach out. Do you know what happens every time I got to the third one? And the first one and the second one have a little great twist in there to make sure what happens every time I get to the third one.

SPEAKER_01

They say I'm ready or I want to go.

SPEAKER_03

50% of those people do not answer me, and I'm like, great, they are not motivated, able to see the value, or happy to pay right now. They do not deserve my attention. We gave them a bunch, we set it down, they didn't pick it up. Why am I gonna keep going to the it's like taking food to a hungry person and going here and then it rots on the porch, and then you take it back and it rots on the porch. Why would you use your energy? That is a mindset of scarcity and abundant, and all clients are good clients, and yes is the only answer. And if I don't get a yes from every human, I have failed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And that is not the right mindset for building a wildly successful practice because not everyone's gonna say, yes, your job is to quickly determine who will, add incredible value, identify the ones who won't, give them the information you can to improve their situation and send them on their way and wish them well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_03

It's um that's a lot more than how I got started, but that's how I got started.

SPEAKER_01

Clearly, you're passionate about it. Like we're like so you I get so get this you're 24, but like, and you've been working in someone else's practice. Did you know anything about running you know your own business? Like what you know, what gave you decide to do that.

SPEAKER_03

I told someone once, they're like, How did you learn how to run a business? How did all this, how do you know all this stuff? I'm like, I don't know. It just was in my head. Um, it's trial and error. I read books voraciously. I talked to every successful person that I if I thought that like if there was a class on how to be successful, or there was someone in the community talking about how to build a practice with hypnosis or how to do a NIM crut better, I was there. I mean, I was, as many of us are in our youth, I was just like soaking everything up. And I do think I have a unique ability to synthesize information, see what's pertinent quickly and transform it into something that's applicable. I've literally made a career of it. Um, but I think I have like an intuition for human behavior. And there's a long story there. I grew up with a crazy mom, literally crazy mom, uh, and a PTSD dad, and I lived in a trailer park. So you can insert all the ensuing stories, right, of abuse and anxiety and bad things here. Um, and I think I I just learned how to read humans.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Like I couldn't the house if my mom was like in a particular spiral, right? It would be like the crinkle of an eye, or and it could go very, very badly. And so I honestly, when I reflected, I'm like, what? Because someone was like, You're like the human whisperer. Like, how do you understand how people are going to think and feel and act? And there's a lot of learning and education and knowledge, there's absolutely no question. But there's we all have like these great and unique gifts and talents. And one of mine is really understanding how humans operate. Because in order to make things better, you have to work through the vehicle, and the vehicle is us. And so every limitation between us and our next level of success, what we can be, have, achieve, experience, give, has to do with us and what's between our ears. It has nothing to do with how many hours we work or what we produce or what fees we charge. Those are important, but they're levers in the game of building a wildly successful business that comes with a life that you love. And that's the trade-off that makes us different than a lot of firms, which is anyone like there are a lot of great firms and consulting strategies and things that will work, but can you do that in a container that lets you feel deeply, soulfully satisfied in your work, in the value that you're giving to clients in the system and the ecosystem that you're creating for your team, the business that you're building, the impact or the legacy that you're gonna have. Can you go home at night, having known

The Three-Step Referral Follow-Up

SPEAKER_03

you did really great work? You were a badass, you helped people, right? You did awesome stuff, right? We all want to do that. And then we want to go home and be like, oh, I want to join my family and go for a run. But we but we can't quite unplug. I call it the edge. And if you're successful, you get stuck on the edge because if you go, right? If I go home and I let things go in my mind, something's gonna happen over here, and then we go to work and we love that, and we're like, but wait, I like my soul wants to spend time over here, and we just do this balancing act. And I'm like, I just want to teach everyone you can just widen the platform, just widen the platform. That's it. And that platform starts with your business, your behavior, and your beliefs, right? So it's mindset and the mechanics are the methods of the business. And we spend 99% of our energy on the mechanics. I've been doing mechanics for 32 years. I know all of the mechanics. I promise you, there's some complicated stuff. There's no question. But if I ask you about a complicated client situation, are you gonna be like, oh no, I don't know what to do? No, you're gonna be like, ooh, I know how to handle this, right? And that maybe the pockets where you're like, ooh, I got like you love that, right? Our goal is to be in this empowered, energized space when we show up for work each day, right? Doing energy, creating revenue, producing work that we love. If we sit in that seat, we're gonna add deep value to clients. If we build a business around it, positions, people, process, and platform, we're gonna add deep value to clients and we're gonna enjoy the ride and the rewards. And to me, that's the point. Who wants to ride the edge? I did 20 something years and it was successful, and I made a ton of money, and I had massive impact. That's the thing. I literally every day I'm like, I made impact. I go, Oh, I made money. No joke. Um, once you've made a little money, you realize impact is the ultimate income, but you you ultimately want to feel secure before you can write out. That's that's that's the trick. We can have that level of safety and security before the big goal, and we're constantly striving to fill that gap. And in that striving, we're not present, we're not on purpose, and as a result, we might have a deep profit margin, but we're often not personally fulfilled. The joy, the enthusiasm, the energy in the beginning, I work hard and things happen, it becomes more of like a heavy, you know, I get used to be fun, and now, and and everything's dependent on me, and you know, and that's not what anyone wakes up to go to work for.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely. And more like I know, because obviously you you've advised advisors all over. So you advise um advisors now who uh really want to build up their practice, you advise advisors who um you know who want to, you know, have more of a quality of life. And assuming this is what you're talking about, kind of the widening the platform for kind of where where you want to be and where you want what you want to do. Which of which of those set of advisors do you prefer advising the most?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, you that's an impossible question. I love coaching growth-minded advisors who are ready to radically transform their business and their life. You want to grow 10%, you want to change a little bit, not your girl. You want a 2x or 3x in a few years, you want to add deep, like value to clients, put your head on the pillow, and know that you're doing world-class work really efficiently and profitably. That's the kicker, right? Then that's our jam, right? Lots of people will sell you, I'm building, right, build a business, do consulting, practice management. I'm not in that game. I'm in the game of transformation. My job is to show up and disrupt people, it's to have conversations and collaborations that are catalysts for unlocking people's possibility. You could be a lifestyle advisor with $100,000. We have those clients that are lifestyle program.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And in three years, they're not $100,000 advisors. They're $500,000 or a million. No joke, because we have a framework and a roadmap. You know what to do when a client comes to you because you have all of that experience and mental models. So we took all of our experience. I've coached Michael Kitz's for seven years. Yeah. He's two X'd, he's 10X'd twice.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_03

Twice. And he will tell you all day long it's mindset and leverage, right? Teams, the things that right take your talent and create the ability for them to have more impact. You don't 10X twice. If you look at his growth curve, it's Michael, he's growing, right? But I kid you not, it goes like this. And it's right there that he started coaching. And it's because the only limits that we actually have are the ones that we place on ourselves. And they 95% of them exist in the six inches between our ears. So when when Michael and I first started coaching, I had unretired from the beach in Costa Rica, right? I'd retired and I was like, I'm just gonna go find myself. I did. Um, and that's really where the mindset and kind of the the performance and the personal psychology came in is I literally went off to the beach. I sat down on and no joke for real, I remember it vividly. I'm in the chaise, I've got my laptop, and I type in while looking at the beautiful ocean. How to be successful, dot, dot, dot. And happy. I hadn't nailed the happy part, and literally came up an article on, I don't know, something, right? And that led to mindset and psychology, and that led to a study by Carnegie Institute that was actually published in 1906. Carnegie had a lot of money, and it turns out he was really into like human growth and development. And he wanted to start an engineering school, but he knew that people were like inherently lazy and inefficient, brains are, and it's hard to like learn and absapt and apply new information. So he did a study on how we like learn and change and grow, which is fascinating from a human perspective. Like, if you want to know something, that's pretty valuable. So he did this study, loads of money, time, and they came up with three wildly cool conclusions, right? Basically, the there are three factors to your success. And by success, I don't mean the amount of money you make. I mean what you can be, have, achieve, experience, enjoy. And they are knowledge, right? What you know and where you are, right? Dumb in Dubai is different than brilliant in Bangladesh, right? So good news is you can move and you can learn, right? Second is uh where you, I'm sorry, what you know, where you are, right? Second is skills. I love that because you have them where you can get them, right? So it's what you know, where you are, skills, and the third was mindset or psychology. And I was like, yeah, I read the self-help books. That's fine, yeah. And then I read the next line, and that line is literally, Chris, the reason that you and I are sitting here today, the reason that I've helped tens of thousands of advisors change their practice in their life, because that next line said of those three, 85% of your success is attributable to mindset.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_03

And I was like, what? I've spent you know 20-something years becoming

Scarcity Thinking And Client Fit

SPEAKER_03

a business expert, right? Like, I know all of this and I saw this and I saw this. And in all of that, what I learned is so much of that striving for success was my own personal psychology. I thought that being sick, I thought that success would give me significance. I thought that making money would somehow give me meaning. Not consciously, I didn't sit at my desk on Tuesday and go, I'll make money and I'll feel better inside. Right. It's just you we've all most successful people, and by most I mean like 95%, because I've coached a lot of successful people. Our motivation is based on some version of I'm not good enough. I have to protect, I have to prove, I have to defend, I have to achieve, because that's where my worth sits. And 95% of our psychology is based on our mindset. And most of our mindsets have some very deep, limiting beliefs. It's human. It has no, it didn't matter if you had good parents or bad parents, if you had bad ones and bad experiences, it's worse. There's no question. Um, but from zero to five, we are basically formed. Our brains have no ego. It can't be like you're wrong. We think our parents are perfect. So if someone's like, why are you doing that? We'll be like, I don't know. Why am I doing that? I might five times is one thing. 50, we're like, I don't know. I must be wrong, right? So there's deep psychology here. There are all if you're sitting here going, oh, this is so woo, it doesn't apply to me. There are two exceptions. So I invite you to consider if you're one of them, one sociopaths, two, psychopaths. If you are one of the exceptions, please call me. I have a referral for you. Their brains don't have ego, they can do bad things, and that little voice, it's like, Chris, you shouldn't do that. That voice literally isn't in their head. Yeah, that the voice is like, oh, that felt so good. Let's go find another one. Right? So deep exceptions. Outside of that, we all run. This is so important. We all run on our stories. You think that you're getting up and making decisions during the day? We are 95. In 1906, they said it was 85. Today's neuroscience, not woo. Harvard Mind Body Institute, like lots of reputable scientific institutions are now very clear that your psychology is what drives your health, your wealth, your well-being. Right? We have a lot of agency over our life and situations. So they've done these studies, which are fascinating. On average, we have about 60,000 thoughts a day, some of us more than others, right? 50,000 plus 60,000 thoughts a day on average. Here's the thing only about 95% of those, about 5% of those are conscious to you.

SPEAKER_04

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03

Like when you're sitting here and you're like, oh, why is she wearing that outfit? Conscious thought. Right? Like, interesting choice. Conscious thought. Right? You have 55,000 of those thoughts running through the back of your mind that you don't hear. Chris, you should not do that. You're not ready. If you raise the fee on that client, they are gonna fire you. All of your clients are gonna find out, they're all gonna leave, you're gonna file bankruptcy, you're gonna get eaten by a hungry tiger, and Chris, you're gonna die. And that, if we're honest, that is how the possibility of a fee increase and what a client might say feels in our body. Because our brain, remember, is a hardwired primitive system with one job. You know what that job is?

SPEAKER_01

Survival.

SPEAKER_03

Don't die. Okay, don't die, not thrive, not have a great life, feel good. Nope, don't die. You can feel shitty in your skin. It doesn't care, you're not dead, right? So we have to get from our limbic system, the oldest part of our brain, evolutionarily, to our prefrontal cortex, the Einstein rational, logical, thinking part of our brain that's technically only charged 5% of the time. Have you ever gotten home, uh, pulled into your driveway, and thought to yourself, Oh, how did I get here? I was not actually looking at the road. We've all done that many times. That's what I'm talking about. You have a conscious mind, you're aware of it. You have a subconscious mind. And when you go off into thinking land about what happened at work or what you're going to say to the kids or the wife when you get home, subconscious goes, I would like to not die today, right? Hands on the wheel, and your brain is literally, it's really powerful if you think about it. And I'm I'm spending some time on it because this happens in everything we do. You're kind of looking out the window, but you're not checked in, right? You're definitely in, but you're kind of there and you're having a deep conversation in your head. You pull into the driveway and you're like, whoa, I'm so glad I didn't die. Truth, right? Like, oh wow, I was, and that's because your subconscious literally said, I'm lazy, I'm efficient, I have to keep us alive. I'm gonna take the wheel. He didn't ask, but I'm gonna do it anyway because that's my job. Keep us alive. Now, here's the best part. You're sitting across from a prospect.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_03

So people are like, Yeah, this might doesn't affect me, Stephanie. I just want your systems. One of our advisor coaches was like, I love that all. Can I just have the systems? He's now like, oh my God, the systems are like a box. Like, this is what makes it possible. So here's how it shows up in real life. If you don't think that your personal psychology shows up, here's what I've got for you. Prospect shows up. They've got a need, clearly, or they wouldn't be there. They've talked to you a referral, right? Often, they've certainly gone to your website. They have browsed a bunch of it. So they've spent some time, we can agree, right? They probably care. They've called, probably had an introductory conversation, 15, 20, 30 minutes or so. Then they had a first meeting on Zoom or in person. Let's call that an hour, maybe an hour and a half, maybe two hours for some of you in person. Please don't do that, right? You did some work, hopefully, not too much work. No actual work for free is required, by the way, right? Then you have a second meeting, and then like more. And here's what we got for you, and we get you and the fee, right? Like all of that value, right? That education and information has been transferred, and then you quote the fee. And the prospects look you dead in the eye and they say, Oh, we love all that. Could we have that at a discount? What happens to your body in that moment every time? You feel it, right? You feel it. I'm not saying you jump out of your chair and run, but you feel it. You're like, oh god, no, not that. And then you're like, ick, I hate this. That's a story that says my fee is being challenged, which means my worth is being challenged, and I'm not clear on that. I might need to shrink myself. I have to make this better. Make this better is very different than holding your own and knowing your truth and what your value is. And knowing your value is infinitely more than your fees, being able to confidently communicate that and be totally okay if someone doesn't get it and says no. So sidebar. That prospect has said that to you, and you're like, ugh, and you instantly feel it. So here's what's actually happening in your body because your mind and body are totally connected. Your brain perceived a threat. It's not a tiger that's gonna eat you, but in modern society, someone rejecting you is just as bad because your caveman self thinks you're gonna get kicked out of the tribe. And if you get kicked out of the tribe, you still get eaten by the tiger. It's not safe to be rejected. And in a profession that has fed, fed, fed, yes is the only answer. Get the assets, right? Don't worry if they don't make you any money. They'll pay off someday, right? They'll die and their kids will give it total, total like please talk about that's a total falsehood, too, right? So we have all these stories and conditioning that we've been fed that say this is the way to succeed. But Chris, I would just argue if you look around, that chisnet is not working. So the model that we've been given is broken because it's built on go, go, grind, produce, because the people in charge with all love only make more money when advisors grow. Their quality of life is of no concern to most of them. If you have too many small clients that you're ignoring, they get their share of the revenue. Like there's no, there are some great companies out there, that's not everyone. But if you're in a larger firm, right, it is all about production. And it's a business, and I totally agree. I'd love profit, it's all good. But the point is you have to advocate for yourself, right? And your own position. You have to take agency over your business if you want to unlock the possibilities. Apathy, right? Complacency, doing yesterday, what you write, like that's not going to create or unlock the up level. So let's go back to our prospect. We're sitting there. What's happened? Our brain is perceived a threat, our limbic system kicks in and goes, make it go away. Fight or flight kicks in. What happens when we're in fight or flight? Two really

Transformation Coaching And Leverage

SPEAKER_03

important things. One, the blood in your brain, in your prefrontal cortex, the logical, rational, thinking part that gets stuff done shuts down because all of the blood, you don't need to think when you're in a fight, you need energy to fight. All the blood rushes to your heart and your muscles so that you can fight or run.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_03

So you're sitting in your chair, you got your polo shirt on, but inside you've got all this energy because your brain just dropped a ton of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol into your body because that's what happens when we hit stress mode. And you need to fight something or run away, except you're doing none of those. So your body is pounded with these like fight chemicals andor run chemicals, and you're sitting there in your pillow shirt with a smile, and you can't be like, that's stupid. Why would you ask me that? Right? Like, so you say yes, because you don't have an alternative that you can own and still be standing in your truth that lets you and them maintain your dignity. So we shrink, we go, yes, just to make it go away. And our brain's like, it's money, it's good money, it'll be fine, but it's a little bit less money, it's still money. And then two days later, Chris, what are you doing? You're like, and when that client calls a year from now, you're like, Because you know that you made a compromise. That's integrity. You cannot feel good about your practice when you make a series of knife-like decisions that cut into your integrity because it's your truth. If you don't know what you're worth, don't charge that. But so here's the psychology of it. I'm gonna reframe this in a way that's gonna change, literally, I promise you, it's gonna change the way you think about it forever. That prospect has essentially said to you, Chris, I did all this work. We have some problems we really need to solve. We're finally ready to do something. I talked to my brother, my CGA, I did the first call, I did the website, I did all of that. And thank you for laying down all this value. We really, we love this. Chris, this is amazing. Um, there's just one small issue. We love this value. We just think it's worth an antsy bit less than you do. So, how about you give us all that awesome, all that expertise, all that love, care, and attention that you talked about for 25% less? And when we just won't tell the other clients, bummer, they weren't smart enough to ask. And when I call and when I need work, I want you to just love me and never think about the fact that I asked you for a discount. And I want you to love on me and give me your best, just like every other client. What do you say, Chris?

SPEAKER_01

Meh, no.

SPEAKER_03

You would say no, right? Like everybody would say no. But when a prospect asks for a discount, that is literally what they're saying, Chris. They're saying, I did my homework, I love what you've offered, I just think it's worth less. If you want my business, you lower your bar. And I'll tell you guys what I tell my 15-year-old daughter just because somebody can't reach the top shelf baby doesn't mean you step down. Now, you should know that your fees deliver your value is many times an essence of your fees. If you don't do that, go do some homework, right? Segment your clients, build a service model, give them standard service very efficiently. Then you can focus on your specialized and like we have a service model and a strategy where you can literally give clients five or 10x the value, but you're doing it so efficiently, not at the expense of service and care and attention. Literally, our advisors are like, I spend more time with my clients. And that top client dilemma, you all have it. I'll say I've asked audiences of thousands of people. It's one of my favorite questions. How many of you spend as much time as you would like with your top clients?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, not enough, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And I see, I think 5,000 people at an FPA national conference, three people raise their hand. I'm pretty sure two of them were fibbing, but right, three people still pretty low. Why is that?

SPEAKER_01

Because you're worrying about all the other clients that you've taken on that maybe.

SPEAKER_03

You're you're busy, right? We're busy. And then there's those small clients that what does everyone say? They don't take too much time. All right, so we can reframe that too, right? It's what I call the gold star story. So we've established that we don't spend as much time as we'd like with our top clients. Neil, one of our advisors, took a $700,000 practice, turned it into a $1.8 million practice in three years, and now spends radical amounts of time with his top clients. If you ask Neil that question, he's like, I'm, dude, I can't do anything. Like, we're so good. We're so good. And he knows it in his bones. And the way that he feels as an advisor and a business owner is so energized and empowered and confident. Most of us are sitting in disempowered and overwhelmed, and we don't know what to do about it. The answers are all here. We just have to shift our thinking. Until you shift your thinking, nothing else will move. It all happens here, and then the body and reality catch up. So we're at our everyone's had an annual client appreciation event, right? Or a dinner or a barbecue or something. At the end, Chris is gonna stand up and be like, thank you for coming. Everyone's gonna walk up to Chris and the team and shake their hand and give you a hug. It's gonna be great, right? We're gonna do it different this time. Remember all those top clients that we love, but we don't spend enough time on? On their name tags, we're gonna put a gold star. And we're gonna put one of those families or couples at each table and let the other clients fill in around them. At the end of the evening, Chris, when you get up, you're not gonna give the standard thank you. You're gonna say thank you so much for being a client of this firm. We really value and appreciate you. But the truth is your fees don't actually cover the cost of servicing you. So we want you to find the person at your table with the gold star in their name tag. And we

Why Mindset Drives Most Success

SPEAKER_03

want you to thank them because their fees are underwriting your relationship with our firm. Oh, right. Like, if you're listening, I know you're like, dagger. I mean, it's so fun to do it in person because I just watch everyone go, oh, like I see it, right? And I'm like, okay, it landed. And I'm not doing it to make every anyone feel bad, right? What I'm doing is disrupting your pattern loop, your status quo conditioning, right? Your brain is hardwired to avoid rejection. Your brain is hardwired to get revenue. It's berries, you will eat, right? So, what we have to do is insert a clear and conscious thought model, right? Or thinking pattern into the equation. Because if we ask better questions, we get better answers. What fee, right? You you set your fee, you did some research, you put it on paper, right? You filed it with the state and a national body, right? Whatever the UK version of that is, you filed it with some official people, right? Paid a fee, like this is it. And the first time that a prospect comes to you and goes, I don't think I want to pay that, we go, okay, you're right. How is that logical? It's not so it's not, it's emotional. When a prospect asks for a discount and we don't like it and we don't want to do it, and we say yes anyway. How is that logical? It's not, it's emotional.

unknown

Right?

SPEAKER_03

When we do things for free for clients because we don't have a script that says, right, you know, this is what's included in your plan, and we're happy to be of service, right? We're happy to give you our we don't, it's not logical to do things for free for small clients, right? So many advisors are doing too much for too many, for too little, for too long, and they're telling themselves they don't really take that much time. And I'm like, great, then you should have oodles of it. If you have a hundred clients at $10,000, that's a max eight hours a client. Max delivering deep value. We are not cutting anything out, we are compounding value if you do it the limitless way. If you have 100 clients at eight hours, Chris, how many hours is that 100 clients at eight hours, 800, 800 hours. Right. And there's about 2,000 hours in a year.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So I would just ask everyone where the what where in the world is all your time going?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Where's your time going? And it's going to be those small clients or the low or no-profit clients that you tell me take no time, they take your time, they take the staff's time. Right. And we're just so terrified, knees knocking at the thought of raising a fee or transitioning them to someone else, or even another advisor. We so we're so gripped in literal fear about the response from them that we literally hold our business hostage. Literally, your psychology is holding your possibility hostage. And then I was that's what I learned on the beach in Costa Rica. And then I spent the next seven years basically getting my own personal master's degree in human behavior, performance psychology, coaching, like anything. And to your point, I had always done it, which is why I think my consulting practice was so successful. I was always asking the why questions and the deeper questions and what's stuck between you and it, and how do we kind of create peace with that? And then I was like, oh God, if I learn all this stuff, I'm gonna be really good at transformation and change later. And it turns out I was right. Like what we can do in a practice and a life now is radical. It's radical. We have story after story of doubling or tripling firms in a few years, just reframing the thinking, and then the tactics follow, and right, we've got loads of stuff for that.

SPEAKER_01

So so you you said something really interesting as well. I'm gonna rewind a little bit uh on mindset, um, which obviously this is this is all built around. Like, how do you expand your mindset? Like, if you have if you have limiting beliefs, you know, everything you said is completely logical, completely get it. Like, how do you go about changing your mindset? Everything you said makes sense, but if I think that way, like how do I snap out of it?

SPEAKER_03

That's a great question. I'm really glad you asked. Step one is you have to be aware that you have one. Awareness is literally the key. The second that you land in the driveway and you're like, oh wait, I how did I get here? That's awareness, right? You were basically sleepwalking on autopilot. Uh, right? We are literally on autopilot. Our subconscious is looking and feeling, something happens and you instantly react, right? That's your reticular activating system, right? A part of your brain that filters and tells you what to think and feel based on your stories, tells you how to act in a fifth of a second. That's not conscious, it's not logical, it's emotional and reactive. So our first job is awareness because awareness means we can separate ourselves from the story. If I am the story, right? If I'm worried about this or I'm depressed, right? If I am the story, what's my ability to have agency over it? I can't. If I am my arm, can I change my arm? Right. So someone gave I heard an example that I thought was really brilliant. It's not mine, and I don't remember who it was, so I'll if I figure it out, I'll give them credit. Um, and the the example was Harry Potter doesn't know J.K. Rowling. Like he he is J.K. Rowling. But you can't know the author as a part of the story, right? So we have to so I just thought that was kind of interesting, right? Like you can't be the book and the character, but we are, right? And that's an example of your conscious, right? Your subconscious is J.K. Rowling, so you, what you think and feel, right, presently in the moment, that's Harry Potter. So we literally have an author writing the script for us in the back of our mind. Until you know that, you can't change it. You have to take the pin out of your subconscious' hand and say, I'm rewriting the script. So step one is awareness. Step two is name it. So we have lots of strategies and limit practice management, fees, and scripts, but we also have right the mindset and the growth strategies, which is we call it catch and correct. There's lots of different strategies. Catch and correct is you start to notice that you have a story. Once so I grew up in a trailer park with a crazy mom and a PTSD dad, and insert all of the things that you would insume, right? So I left home at 17. I had not an ounce of self-confidence, I was deeply insecure. I was a total peep, like anything to get anyone to love me, right? Like just a deep gaping hole of need. So I spent an entire career building, building, building a business, right, to get it right to prove I was worth it, right? And then it just never worked. I was like, my God, I and that's honestly how I became so good. I was like, I'll get good at this. Oh, it must be this, it must be this. And then finally I was like, there are no more boxes to check. Right. And that's when the work began. And so what I had to start doing was noticing and naming it. So noticing it is here's the simple way to do it. It's anyone can do this, no Harvard degree required. Here's how you know there is something to work on. If you have a thought or a feeling that is negative, that is persistent, not Bob drove by you, cut you off, flipped you off, and moved on. And right, you're you're done five minutes later. I mean, like, I feel overwhelmed every day at work. I wish my practice were different, right? I wish I had a steady pipeline of clients. I wish my relationship was better, I wish my body was better, I wish my bank account was better. It first of all, you're sitting in lack, which is the absolute way, the best way to perpetuate lack is to sit in it. Um, but if you have something that is persistently

Discounts, Fear And Integrity

SPEAKER_03

right pulling you or weighing you down that feels negative, that is 100% your clue that something needs tend to. So, guys, in general, right, society is not big on feelings, right? Like feelings are for the weak, and that's why it's all woo, right? Top performers in every field know this. Top performers in every field. Every CEO is doing mindset and mindfulness, and you're right. So it's about priming our brains for an optimal life experience, right? More wealth, abundance, joy, impact. So once we notice it, like, hey, I notice that every time a prospect asks me for a discount, I feel really bad. Then we can name it. Oh, what's that story? So the best way I know to name to start naming stories is uh exercise called It's Not the Truth. You're literally gonna take a piece of paper. This is way more powerful than people give it credit for. You're gonna take a piece of paper, and with a pen, you're gonna write like whatever you start, you're gonna reflect a little bit. You're gonna write things like, I have to be perfect to be loved. I definitely felt like I had to be perfect to be loved. If I messed up, I wasn't gonna belong, people are gonna get mad at me, I was gonna get beaten, I was gonna get kicked out, I was gonna get eaten by a tiger, and I was gonna die. Right? You're gonna leave four or five lines and you're gonna write the next thing that comes to your mind. Like, right, I can't say no to prospects because they'll, you know, they'll hate me. Or I can't transition clients because, right, uh, all my clients will leave and I'll die. You're gonna just come up with as many of those as you can. I've gotten no, right? Because you are leaving space. Then you're gonna go back. This is the lie, by the way. And we're gonna insert some truth. So now we're reframing for our brain. So your brain's got neural pathways. Every thought is literally a neural pathway that your brain puts energy on, and that energy tells you how to feel or think or do. So if we know that our brain is an operating system, what does that mean? Hot damn crazy, it means we can upgrade it. We are literally an organic operating system in a meat suit with some kind of a soul, right? If you're into that, sprinkle it in. So why not optimize the meat suit for an optimum life experience, right? Because we can. And that was the thing that took me from disempowered to empower. So you're gonna write the truth. Doesn't have to be perfect to be good. I am a good human, I'm allowed to make mistakes, I've been conditioned to believe that I'm wrong, I love who I am. Anything that you can believe or come close to believing, you're gonna write down until you run out. And there should be two or three or four or five things on there. You're gonna do that, and once you've done it in the ideal, you're gonna take a red pen and cross it out. Your brain understands that red means bad joke, right? You're gonna cross this out. This becomes the truth. Now we've noticed it, we've named it. It now we're gonna catch and correct it. I'm walking through my day. Staff says something, and I'm like, maybe I do something, and I'm like, I'm in my office, and I'm like, wait a minute, I'm gonna notice it. I don't feel good in my body. That's all you gotta notice. And you're gonna name it. What doesn't feel good? So we have four questions that we ask. What's happening? I'm in a conversation. I was in a conversation with the prospect. What's happening really? Well, this is where it gets juicy. What's happening really is that they challenge my fee, and I was like, I don't like this. And I said yes anyway, and now I'm kicking myself on the high knee because now I don't feel an integrity and I feel like I lowered my bar, and now I feel less confident than I did before because I don't think I'm worth it. And I evidenced that. Now, if you've noticed it, do you instantly feel differently about it? So when it's right here and it is you, you feel it. When you separate it, the emotion fades. So you I watched Harry Potter with my kid recently. You know Harry Potter where they have that scene where the monsters come and they like tell it funny things to make it go away? There's a scene in Harry Potter where the biggest fear you have comes out of this chest. The biggest fear you have. Awful. And the lesson is right, you wave the wand and you abracadabra, and you think something silly. You think of that monster riding a hobby horse with a pinata on his head. And the second it's actually a real coaching strategy. This isn't good to know that JK's paying attention. The second that you do that, it changes the framing in your mind. So the interesting thing is that fear and excitement to your brain happen in the same location, activated in the same way. The only difference between fear and excitement to your brain is the story about it. It's the story. If the story is this might hurt me and it's gonna be bad, we hit fear. If the story is, I got this, what an adventure, I'm gonna learn some stuff, the story is good. So what's happening? What's happening really? Here's the third question. Is it really true? 99.999% of the time when I go through this with clients, in minutes, they're like, oh my God, that big scary monster in the closet was a teeny stuffy with a flashlight behind it. No big deal. Fourth question, what do you choose to believe? I choose to believe I have deep value many times in excess of my fees. I work with the right clients. Those are people who are motivated, able to see the value, and happy to pay. Someone's not a right client, I wish them well. So what? Some will, some won't. So next move on, right? Like I'm I'm here to spend my energy on the people who are ready and available to have a radically awesome financial life. That is empowered. That is clear, that is conscious. So if I go through that process, am I gonna feel better? Yes. Am I gonna go from 10 anxiety to zero? Maybe not, but I might go from 10 to 6 or 5 or 4. Now remember, your brain is neural pathways. That's all it is. It's repetition and feeling create pathways. When you learn to walk, it was hard and then it wasn't. Do you think about walking now? So it's gone from conscious to subconscious because the habit routine, the muscle memory has formed. It's the same thing with your brain. Someone could walk up to me and be like, You are a shitty consultant. You do horrible work. I would look them straight in the eye and be like, plus you, I'm good. I know what I've done. If someone I got a divorce recently and maybe saved in that marriage a little too long, maybe it was out of, you know, you got kids, right? You're trying, if someone walked up and they were like, You totally messed up, you should have left, it wasn't better for the kids. I've done a lot of work, but I might take a pause. I might be like, oh, why? Because it has a place to land. If you said to me you're a bad consultant, I am good. My little halo of self-love around that, I'm like, I have so much evidence to counter the bullshit that you were feeding me. I'm like, no way, man. Like, maybe you talk to somebody, I don't know, but that is not the experience my people have. It's my truth, it's my identity. You cannot. I offer, I am of service, I add value, it is who I am as a human being. If you know me, you know I can help it. So if I made a mistake, I clearly didn't do it on purpose, then you should not be chastising. So I'm like, I'm good. And if something bad happened, let's talk about it. Don't, you know, so one that's never happened. But if it did, I'd be okay. But if someone walked up and said, you know, hey, you you gained 15 pounds that you shouldn't have had staying in that marriage and your butt's bumpy, I'm good, you know, I love the skin, I'm in, I'm all good. But it's an example of something that might make you pause or cringe and be like, I don't know, does my butt look good in these jeans? And it's because if there is a place that we are not whole in ourselves, if anyone challenges it, it's gonna land. You're gonna feel it. If someone challenges you in an area where you feel whole, you are gonna bless their sweet little heart because they just don't know better yet. Do you know how much heart blessing I do? I'm like, bless his heart. He just doesn't know better yet. Bless his heart, they just don't know better yet. The anger, the anxiety, the animosity over people, and they're that just you just don't care. You really just don't care because when you're whole in yourself, there's no holes for people to poke. Yeah, we notice it, we name it. I call it nudge it. You're not gonna change that overnight. I'm not gonna, you know, no, I'm not gonna blow smoke up. But can you change it over time? Oh my god, Chris. I used to freak out, like I literally was the poster child for not mental health. Pick anything on the chart, and you could sometimes you could double triple check the boxes with the gold star for being right awesome at anxiety or depression or like just check all the boxes of the things that happen to people, and most of them I have checked.

Catch And Correct Limiting Beliefs

SPEAKER_03

And I had to literally work my way out of depression, anxiety, abandonment, like all the stuff to sit in a place of wholeness and self-love. Like that's actual work, it's work people avoid because it's soft and it's scary, and it feels we don't know what to do with it. This is not about lying on a crouch and crying like about your mama. It doesn't mean that there's not some work there, but it's about here's the way I explain it to people you get paid to think. Do we agree? We get paid to think. We could do our job sitting on our hands when you get paid to think. I would argue that the quality of your thoughts matters immensely. Immensely. Clients call you when the market's down and we freak out. And I'm like, why? Why would you freak out? This is your super bowl of value. Someone gave you all their money. They said, I trust you. That trust equity is deep. They panic for all the reasons I have told you. And they didn't just wake up today and panic. That little story has been spinning in their head for a while. And today was the morning they couldn't take it. They had, they didn't have any more capacity to manage the fear, and they had to call you, and you're like, oh, and I'm like, no, oh my God, I want you to not go, oh, it's gonna be bad. They're gonna fire me. I want you to think what you told them you would think, which is clear and conscious and committed to adding value, which means you're gonna have the hard conversation. Carl Richards has a great saying, I love it. And he's like, you start a conversation with, is this gonna be a hard conversation? You might fire me. But if I don't have this conversation with you, you should definitely fire me. So good, right? Because it tells them you're not gonna like it, but it's so good for you. Yeah, that's a reframe. You're literally changing the way someone thinks about that situation. So our job is ultimately to sit in a place where we're clear and conscious and committed to adding value so that we can get on the phone and be like, this is why I make the big bucks. Because they're in an absolute panic. I am the source of presence, calm, and poise, because that energy is what they're looking for. They don't, they know it's not perfect, they know you're not gonna have a perfect answer. They want you to, but they know what they're looking to do in that moment, Chris, is borrow your safety and borrow your comfort and borrow your calm and your presence because they are in a galactic lack of it. And that's your job. And you can't deliver that if your energy matches theirs. It's literally our job in that moment to take the breath and go, I'm good. The odds are overwhelming that they are not going to take their money. But if they do, I can sleep at night because I know that the net detriment to me is this big and the detriment to them is that big. And oh God, I hope they find someone and I wish them well.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Not oh, panic. I have to scramble to save the client is lack energy. That is not lack energy, is not what's needed when a client is coming to you with desperate lack energy. We need safe, secure, loving, abundant. It's gonna be okay. Energy. You've all right, we've got lots of conversations like, hey, I don't control the markets, the smartest people on the planet can't. What I can do is help control the choices that we make in hard markets.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03

These are the moments where big swings or knee-jerk reactions cost us more and more. We've got lots of information. I'm happy to show it to you. And then we go back to the goals. Bob and Jane, if we need to make a pivot in the portfolio, we'll absolutely do that. But we want to start going back to the goals. If something's changed there, because we built drawdowns into the portfolio, we've got those guardrails in place, right? We can have a two-year drawdown chart here, right? If this lasts longer than two years, we're gonna need to take a look at right dropping the monthly income, right? Or we can redeploy some, right? Like it's a it's a pretty logical conversation, and you should be okay if you've actually done good financial planning. You should have a drawdown period in the portfolio. And then you can literally say to them, if this lasts longer than this long, and this long is not three months, right? It's two years typically, right? At least in the US planning. And then what does their brain do instantly? Like, oh, this is no longer immediate. It's no longer an immediate problem. I have two years before I have to freak out. It's always better before two years.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_03

And now what they can do, it doesn't mean they're gonna radically change their mind in an instant. It means they can hear the rest of the conversation you need to share with them because I've diffused the immediate panic. So if you can effuse the immediate need, then you get permission to prescribe how to make it better. We use this with prospects, right? We use it with clients. I call it bicodin and vitamins. People come to you in a moment. I need the pain to go away. You need to know how to respond, clear, conscious, presence, power, safety,

Calm Presence In Market Panic

SPEAKER_03

right? Educating in the financial planning process, not selling. Educating is contagious. Selling, no one likes that, right? In this client crisis, going back to that energy, right? Who do I want to be as an advisor? How do I want to show up? I want to show up as calm, conscious, and committed to my vision and my values. If you do that, all these random decisions that get out of alignment, I made the discount of that fee, I hired that person, it's not quite right, right? I'm doing this with my time and I shouldn't be in email 17. We start to pull things into congruence because our identity has to have it that way. So if our identity is lack and abundance and I have to serve everyone no matter what, because I'm feeling that way internally, my brain will not override that. But if I can do that work to notice it, name it, nudge it, right? And over time, if I repeat that, Chris, right, each time you start to have like, oh, here it is again. Uh one of my favorite strategies is name it and talk to it. Mine's name is Ken. I'm like, Ken, what are you talking about? He was like, oh, that client didn't hire you because he thought the fee was too high. That has never actually happened, but that's a really good example. And I'm like, okay, Ken, like you're full of it. Like, Ken, I'm awesome. I provide so much love and value and support. Like, I have a million studies or case studies of like, what are you talking about, Ken? I'm like, oh, you're coming from the trailer park. You're trying to keep me down. I'm like, Ken, please go back to your cave. We're good today. And I'm telling you, in that 15 seconds, I am right as rain. I'm like, Ken, go back to your cave. So you notice that you name it, you nudge it, you talk to it. All of those mean that you are conscious of that story feeling or belief in psychology and research, it's called internal represental representation of reality. It's how you view reality. In normal life, we just call it limiting beliefs or stories. Everything is a story. You've heard people, you're like, the world is out to get me. All they're gonna see is the world is out to get me. Joy could land in their lap and they can't see it because their brain will only make true things that fit with our identity. It's called confirmation bias. You can put perfectly good information in front of people and they're like, uh-uh. And we're like, what? That's how powerful our brain is. So we spend 95% of our time on our technical skill, maybe our body, right? Lots of time on our bank account. How much time do we spend optimizing our brain?

SPEAKER_01

Not enough.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So Einstein said, I'll stop now because you know I get up, I get so excited about this stuff. He said, No problem can be solved with the same consciousness that created it. It's my favorite quote.

SPEAKER_01

I love it.

SPEAKER_03

If you want to change your life or your business or your body or your business or your bank account, you start by changing your thinking.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. That's been such a good conversation, Stephanie. I've really, really appreciated

Where To Find Stephanie

SPEAKER_01

it. Um, and I love how relevant it is to not just advisors in the US, but pretty much advisors all over.

SPEAKER_03

We have clients in Australia, the Philippines, Sweden, and I think your brain, brains work everywhere on the planet, it turns out.

SPEAKER_01

Where can advisors find you if they want to find out more?

SPEAKER_03

Uh, they can find us at limitlessfa.life. And if you want actionable insights to elevate your work, wealth, and well-being, dropped in your inbox. You can uh sign up for our Monday mojo. Those are sort of brief insights to help you improve your situation.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. Well, I will uh I will definitely be signing up myself. And I've taken up enough of your time. I really, really appreciate you coming on and speaking to our uh viewers. Thank you so, so much, and we hope to see you soon.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, it's such a pleasure, Chris. I'm happy to come back. You guys have been great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you.