Making An Impact
Why did Mary Beth decide to go from building an income at her own firm to building a business at Abacus? One word—impact.
On my podcast, she said:
"It really came down to if I had all the money in the world, where would I be spending my time? And it was always going to be about educating and empowering people around their finances, but it didn't have to be just under my face. How would I have much larger impact and how would I be able to reach a larger audience? And I felt in my heart and in my gut that I would be able to have a larger impact by bringing my passion into Abacus and being able to lean on other advisors, grow their marketing platform, and share that."
When I coach advisors, I see a similar dynamic at play. Advisors often come to me because they want to make a bigger impact. They want to grow, but not grow just to make more money (they already have plenty). They want to grow because they feel they have much more to contribute and can make a greater impact by improving and accelerating their business-building focus.
And the size of impact is relative. Advisors doing $3 million in revenue come to me and want to discuss what it takes to get to $10 million. And those at $10 million want to get to $25 million.
Rather than focus on how big you want to grow, focus on the impact you want to make. When you frame it this way, size follows impact.
The counter-intuitive thing is as you get bigger, you can start to enjoy your work more. Why? Because you have the resources to surround yourself with people who do the work you don’t enjoy so you can spend the bulk of your time in your happy place and making an impact (or taking a year off and traveling with your family).
My challenge to you today is to ask yourself, “How big of an impact do I want to make?”
Steve Sanduski, CFP, is a financial advisor business coach, the co-founder of ROL Advisor, a discovery process technology system, a New York Times bestselling author and host of the Between Now and Success podcast.