In my previous article, we looked at how to select your Financial Freedom Dream team. Knowing who needs to be on your Financial Freedom Dream team is one thing, selecting the best team is another task all together. What should you look for? How do you go about selecting the right trusted adviser to help you?
Picking the good advisers from the bad can be a difficult job. When you are considering an adviser, one of the first things you should do is find out if they work with clients like you.
Do they have other small business clients? Do they understand the pain points and problems business owners and entrepreneurs face?
Let’s take a look at how you can find the right people to help you on your journey.
Four Important Principles
When it comes to selecting people to work with, I adopt the principles from Dan Sullivan of the Strategic Coach. Dan calls these his four ‘referability’ habits for entrepreneurs. I apply them in my businesses, but also reverse them and apply them when selecting other businesses for my personal decisions.
The Four Principles are:
- Do what you say
- Finish what you start
- Say please and thank you
- Always be on time
Easy. But you would be surprised how many people and businesses are not able to consistently live up to all four.
Let me share with you a personal story of how I applied these principles in a major personal decision I made.
A few years ago my wife and I decided to undertake a renovation and extension on our home. It was obviously a massive project and a big decision for us.
As busy people with no expertise in building we relied upon builders and other professionals to get this done properly. The first step was to appoint a draftsman to help us draw up the plans we wanted. We decided to look around and appoint a local business who worked in the area on similar projects.
We met with two draftsman who we both got along with. They asked the right questions. They listened to what we had to say. They communicated how they work in an easy to understand manner. They advised when they would be able to start, how long the project would take and the approximate cost.
Both of them would have been great to work with. They both did what they said (Principle #1), finished what they started (Principle #2) and said please and thank you (Principle #3).
But it was an easy decision to choose who we would work with.
Why?
We scheduled the meetings at 7:30 in the morning, hoping to be finished and off to work at 8.
One draftsman arrived at 7:25am.
The other arrived at 7:40am.
That was all. One was not on time (Principle #4).
10 minutes cost his business a project, revenue and profit.
Applying these principles when selecting your Financial Adviser will be a great starting point to building a trusted relationship you need.
A trusted financial adviser and their team will be the guardians of your plan to achieve financial freedom. Protecting you from your greatest threat – yourself – is key.
Achieving financial freedom requires a champion team, not a team of champions. Knowing how to select your champion team – and more importantly your trusted adviser captain of this team – will maximise your chances of achieving financial freedom.
Next time we will look at the six key areas your Financial Adviser should deliver on in their work with you.
