The Travis Parry Show

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Many of us are no longer in brick-and-mortar buildings, meaning we had to learn how to recreate boundaries and balance in our home office. Today's guest, Charlie Van Derven, knows this very well. A year ago, he bought a trailer with his family and started to travel the country while maintaining a business. He had to develop new strategies and adapt with his family, setting boundaries while on their new adventure. Charlie has always valued positioning his work-life balance in a way that allowed him to be adventurous. 

Charlie has worked with advisors for over 20 years, helping them with their marketing and networking strategy. In 2013 he founded his business, Social Advisors, which helps advisors reach the clients that they will want to work with. He creates custom content that sets his clients out from the crowd. 

As an advisor to advisors, Charlie has seen the toll that people go through while working in the financial industry. To him, balance really means mixing things up and keeping from feeling stagnant. He is very excited to share his journey and the ways that he can help your business grow on today's episode. We will be discussing niche development, networking, business development, and of course how balance fits into all of this. 

Listen to the episode to learn more about: 

• Building balance and boundaries 
• Adapting with family 
• Marketing strategies 
• Accumulative content marketing, personalized content and CRMs 
• Developing a niche and network 

TIMESTAMPS

0:43 – Charlie and Social Advisors

1:38 – How he got into the industry

4:00 – Passion for travel

6:52 – Best mountains to ski

9:25 – His definition of balance

11:48 – Avoiding the workaholic trap

17:56 – Setting boundaries and balance 

23:26 – Adaptation and accountability with family

32:53 – How he helps advisors

40:01 – Personalized content

47:00 – Follow Social-Advisors

RESOURCES

Read more about Charlie and Social Advisors

Make Time Institute Website

Email: [email protected]

Get Travis' newest book!

Watch our Youtube episode!

Many advisors struggle with their health and stress management. Finding the time to eat nutritious meals and exercise is hard when you are working long hours. On today's episode, we speak with Stevyn Guinnip a wellness coach that helps financial advisors regain their well-being and balance in life. She is the founder of Grow Wellthy, where investors invest in their own health. As the daughter of a financial advisor, she saw the toll this industry takes on its members. Long hours of being sedentary and stressed-out can lead to serious issues down the road. To have a truly successful business and work-life balance you have to prioritize your own fitness and stress management. 

Many advisors have spent decades in the industry, building up bad health habits. They have sacrificed for their work. Stevyn is going to discuss how prioritizing your health will help you be a better boss, employee, parent, or spouse. When you feel good, you are more creative, compassionate, and driven. Having a diet and exercise routine can help you maintain better control over your schedule and time. Many of us change our habits, but only after we've been faced with a health scare or crisis. Stevyn knows this, having gone through a near-death experience herself. She wants to help her clients find healthy habits before they reach that point. 

To enjoy your success in the financial advising field, you'll have to be healthy enough to get there. You cannot punish yourself into being healthy, it is all about balance and stress management. Taking care of a client's money is a lot like taking care of your own body. You are evaluating your physical risk and protecting your body as you would protect a client's assets. Join us today to learn more about maintaining a balanced lifestyle as an advisor, plus the three biggest things you can start doing now to improve your well-being. 

Listen to the episode to learn more about: 

• Exercise, physiology, and eating well
• Bad habits that affect our business and family  
• Relieving stress and valuing your health
• Ways to improve your overall lifestyle

TIMESTAMPS

0:31 – Introducing Stevyn Guinnip

1:46 – Her definition of work-life balance

3:15 – What has she seen?

8:04 – How do advisors change?

12:54 – Redefining who you are

14:41 – Why do advisors struggle?

21:30 – Stevyn's backstory

27:03 – Things you should be doing right now

31:20 – Where can you get help?

RESOURCES

Read more about Stevyn and Grow Wellthy

Make Time Institute Website

Email: [email protected]

Get Travis' newest book!

Watch our Youtube episode!

The world is becoming increasingly more digital, including the financial industry. The days of cold calling and driving around town for meetings are less and less common. To discuss this shift to virtual work and how that affects our balance in life, we've interviewed Derek Notman, the founder of Conneqtor, a virtual advising system for financial advisors.

Derek started his journey as a financial advisor in 2006. By 2013 he knew he needed to change his business model to accommodate for more family time. So, as a way to give back to the advisor community, he started to develop Conneqtor allowing advisors to build a business model that was virtual or semi-virtual with a digital marketing platform. Not only was this revolutionary for what Derek calls "life-work" balance, but it was also an important innovation in an evolving digital world.

As we see younger generations enter the financial industry, they bring with them digital fluency. These new advisors also value work-life balance a lot more. This is something, Derek says, the older generations of advisors should take note of. We could truly have a successful and enjoyable career that is mainly virtual with live events or meetings sprinkled in. This is just going to be part of evolving with the market.

However, as we start to shift to work that can be done from home, or really anywhere, we must build healthy boundaries. It can be easy to work 12-to-15-hour days if you are working in a home office.  Derek suggests finding your niche. Who are you as an advisor and who do you want to serve? Have an abundance mindset. It doesn't always have to be about the sale when you start valuing balance and boundaries in your career.

You can learn more about Derek and the innovative work he is a part of by visiting Conneqtor. However, you can start re-evaluating your businesses and your life right now by sitting back, doing a self-assessment, and envisioning what you want your future to look like.

TIMESTAMPS

0:44 – Introducing Derek Notman

1:22 – Journey as an advisor

3:57 – What is work-life balance for Derek?

7:01 – His observations of the industry

10:32 – Where is the industry going?

14:35 – Keeping balance with digital work

17:20 – Advisors evolving with the times

20:03 – Working with clients

23:56 – Making the transition to a niche

25:30 – Where can you learn more?

RESOURCES

Read more about Derek and Conneqtor.

Make Time Institute Website

Email: [email protected]

Get Travis' newest book!

Watch our Youtube episode! 

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

RESOURCES

Read more about Michael

Make Time Institute Website

Email: [email protected]

Get Travis' newest book!

We are very excited to introduce the Balanced Advisor Podcast. A podcast designed specifically for financial advisors, aiding them in finding balance in their life and career. Our host, Dr. Travis Parry started his career as a financial advisor in the early 2000s. He saw the struggles that many of us go through in this field and decided to move into the personal development space as a way to help others. 

In 2019, Travis started the Make Time podcast, which had a much broader audience. The show focused on the struggles many different kinds of entrepreneur's face. As he wrote his #1 international bestseller, "Achieving Balance" he interviewed hundreds of advisors. In these interviews, he saw the need for a space where advisors could express themselves and learn from one another. So, he started to develop the foundation for the Balanced Advisor Podcast. 

This podcast is part of a larger more comprehensive movement in the financial advising field. In the past two years, many of us came to understand the importance of work-life balance, stress management, time management, and other parts of our personal development. Finding balance makes us better advisors, partners, parents, and friends. As he did live events, motivational speeches, and other projects Travis truly saw the need for this podcast.

We will be speaking with advisors in the field. Learning from both those that have struggled and those that have succeeded when it came to finding balance in their own lives. There is much to learn from both sides. We are very excited that you are here to join this movement to find balance in the lives of financial advisors. 

TIMESTAMPS

0:39 – Welcome from Dr. Travis

0:52 – Why he started a new podcast

1:42 – A podcast specifically for financial advisors

2:35 – A part of the balanced advisor movement

4:09 – The goal of this podcast

RESOURCES

Read more about Derek and Conneqtor. 

Make Time Institute Website

Email: [email protected]

Get Travis' newest book!