Description Ep 2: Managing Business Challenges, Growth, and Life with Michael Kitces - Balanced Advisor Podcast
Prioritization and balance are key to becoming a successful financial advisor. Whether you have just started your career or you have been in the field for decades, financial advisors are notoriously busy and stressed-out individuals. A big reason we started this podcast was to help those in this situation.
Today, we have invited Michael Kitces to the show to speak on his experience with business growth, work-life balance, employee hiring, and more.
Michael is a financial advisor, speaker, writer, and entrepreneur. His passion to help clients and advisors has grown into multiple business ventures including the very successful Nerd's Eye View blog. Although he kind of stumbled into financial planning, a few years in he realized it was something he was deeply passionate about. In 2008 he started to explore projects outside of just financial advising.
He now has a business empire. With such success, Michael has faced a lot of frustrations and challenges when. However, having a financial foundation helped him and his family separate business stress and financial stress. Having a plan before you start a new business or try a new venture is of utmost importance.
Michael also goes into building boundaries. With more of us working from home these days, it is important we highlight boundaries between work time and family time, and that we keep those commitments.
Feeling growing pains when it comes to hiring and training? The hiring curve can really detract from a healthy work-life balance if you are not proactive. Think about hiring employees before you actually need them. Remember, if you don't hire early on everything comes back to you at the end of the day as the business owner. Without an adequate team and support system, building those work-life boundaries can often seem impossible.
Lastly, Michael touches on the importance of prioritization. You only have a set amount of time in a day, a month, a year. How will you manage who and what gets priority of that time? This is something important to teach your new employees as well. Michael suggests the rock, pebble, and sand metaphor to truly help you think about time. What are your most important dedications? Your urgent tasks? Instead of saying "I don't have time" say "It is not a priority" your views on what is important in life will change quickly. Michael knows what it is like to work overtime, miss family, and struggle with balance. He wants to help other advisors learn from his experiences and know they are not alone. Listen to the full podcast to learn more about Michael, his business growth, and how he makes time for it all.
TIMESTAMPS
0:48 – Welcome Michael Kitces
5:26 – What Michael does now
14:30 – A foundation for the future
24:11 – Managing work-life balance
31:30 – Challenges with business growth
35:57 – Hire and train as soon as you can
39:04 – How many employees does Michael have?
41:48 – Issues with training
47:40 – Envisioning a jar of time
52:15 - Team communication & productivity
54:27 – Final piece of advice for advisors
If you liked this remember to check out the Balanced Advisor Live Event 10/28-29
