Many advisors came up through the industry starting as a salesperson simply trying to sell products and make a living. Either you started as a stock broker, insurance agent, or other type of salesperson, but everyone gets into this business knowing one or two simple approaches to client’s needs and have one or two products or services that they feel comfortable deploying. We all start where we start. Then over time the professionals learn to add additional education, new skills, new subjects. The last piece of the puzzle is do they ever truly learn to become a business owner in the purest sense. Black Friday is not a social movement. It’s the day that most Fortune 500 companies estimate that they go into “the black” from being in the red. Think about that. That means JC Penney, Macy’s, Best Buy, and Target operated January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, and October in the red. They haven’t made money yet. They’ve spent more than they’ve made and now with two months to go to the end of the year they are cash flow positive. 2/12th`s of their total time, they’re now at a point where they’re making positive cash flow for their company’s bottom line. Of course it’s actually monthly, quarterly and managed differently, but the concept of Black Friday is important.
If you compare that to the way most financial advisors think of their practices, most financial advisors earn what they earn, pay all their bills, take vacations, shop, provide for their families, and then with what’s left they go out and market and try to repeat the process. That’s backwards. If you’re really going to run a business like a business, then you have to reinvest in the business first! Why do the major corporations not actually turn a real profit until black Friday? They understand that what they need to spend on advertising and promotion is a very large portion of their budget. The idea of return on investment, I put in $1, I don’t take $5 out. I put in $1, I take out $1.20. I put $1,000 and I take out $1,200, so I put in $100,000 and I take out $120,000, I put in 1M and I take out 1.2M. The $200,000 that I need to live a lifestyle that I want means that I should have $1.25M running through my company. Why don’t most financial advisors work like that? Because they run their companies backwards. They don’t invest in the cost of acquisition of the client. They don’t know their numbers. What does it cost me to acquire new clients? What are my new clients’ profiles? Very few know. Most simply say “Well, I need to sell something to cover my bills next month,” and the bills get paid first without thought of client acquisition. They don’t consider advertising fuel that runs the machine, they consider it a nuisance.
This is a fundamental change that needs to happen with every financial advisor if they truly want to retire well. Corporations like ours, United Cloud Partners Services, put in processes, enforce accountability for financial advisors, turn their office from a successful selling operation to a successful business.
Make 2017 the year you take the final step with us and you’ll never not know your black Friday dates, times, costs, and expenses if you’re working with us and our professionals whom know how to help you.
Paul A Dyer, CEO