98. If you forget your goal and just focus on your "system", will you succeed?

 

Winners and Losers have the same goal, the only difference is one achieves it while most others fail. If we are to apply this to the total number of financial advisors vying to qualify for the Million Dollar Round Table each year, statistically, just by setting a goal to qualify for the MDRT does not work!

The prevailing wisdom says that for us to achieve anything we want in life, we need to set goals and tie it to an action plan, Jim Collins even coined the term BHAG for "Big Hairy Audacious Goal", the idea is that the bigger, clearer and more well-articulated the goal, the more likely we are to achieve it, because it would constantly inspire and motivate us to reach it!

Inspiration and motivation are not sustainable! just look at new year's resolutions!

One interesting insight I gathered from reading James Clear's book "Atomic Habits" is that "Goals is just a standard to let you know you won the game" while "Systems is a set of habits that allows you to continue playing the game" even after your current (goal) game is won, the system will enable you to play bigger games in the future, one that builds from your latest success. 

A Habit is a series of Behaviors.

A System is a series of Habits.

Success habits for financial advisors are "Prospecting" and "Presenting", setting up a system to embed these two activities in our daily habits is the sure-fire way to success!

Building habits are daunting at the beginning, imagine telling yourself to make 5 client calls a day as suggested by a sales guru, you may do it for a day or maybe two, but as it goes on the weight of rejections may start demoralizing you and you most probably will give up after a while. The key idea is to develop habits to make this automatic!

BJ Fogg in his book "Tiny Habits" suggests breaking down the task to its smallest possible version - so making a client call may just become browsing your contacts in your phone directory. 

Next is to identify an "action prompt", this will tell you when to start a new habit, Fogg suggests tying this to an anchor (a habit you are already doing regularly like having coffee in the morning?)

Your anchor - After I ... (had coffee), the new tiny habit - I will.. (browse my contact list). browsing is much less intimidating than making an actual client call, its easier and you don't need a lot of motivation to do it, so it is an easier habit to create. But just browsing your contacts will not make you any money, you have to "grow this habit", How? 

By celebrating your small success (browsing your contacts)!  After browsing congratulate yourself for a job well done! It may sound ridiculous in the beginning to celebrate such an "insignificant" action, but the positive feeling generated will encourage you to repeat the habit again, this momentum that you have created may now give you enough motivation to repeat and grow this habit.

So the next habit that you formed in this progression may be, After I... (browsed my contacts) I will... (send messages to 3 of them requesting for an appointment)

Celebrate this and grow this to an even bigger habit till you are making 5 client calls a day!

Success is the result of what we do every day, and habits are what we do regularly, embed a new habit that would lead to your achieving your goals to a habit you are already doing will help ensure you do it everyday.

Read "Atomic Habits" (James Clear) and "Tiny Habits" (BJ Fogg | Tiny Habits) for more insights!

All the best my friends

#acgadvice