You're listening to “Financial Advisor Marketing”—the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients, without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal.
James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: What's going on, FAM? FAM, financial advisor marketers. I hope you're doing well. This is going to be a high-level podcast with some material I have never discussed before and I’ve never seen anyone else discuss. I think it's really important to understand, but I’m not sure everyone is going to understand it. We'll call it “The Mindset Paradox.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” There are lots of these sorts of paradoxes in business and it means you must hold true opposing ideas in your mind. [0 1:13.3]
Two things might seem contradictory, but when you step back and analyze them together, you realize the statement is true. For example. The best way to increase your income is to stop working. Huh? That's a paradox, but you can step back and think this also applies to people taking the leap of faith when it comes to quitting their jobs. They quit their jobs. They take the temporary job. Drop in income. They come back. They start their own business. They make more and more and more, and over the long term, they make more money by suffering through that drop.
Another paradox is speak up, but leave your feelings at the door. This is all about making your voice heard, letting people know how you feel, letting them know what you think, getting yourself out there, but not getting involved, or at least emotionally-involved, in certain things. You have to take these rolling punches, I guess, with a grain of salt in business. [02:05.4]
Another one is, to succeed, you must allow yourself to fail. Failure shows what doesn't work, and seeing what doesn't work, brings you closer to success, so to succeed, you must allow yourself to fail.
One more paradox before we get into the meat and potatoes of the show is freedom is a result of discipline. This is one of my favorites. Everyone wants to be free, mentally free, spiritually free, financially free, but in our society, that freedom comes from disciplining yourself to consistently, really, I mean, do stuff you might not want to do.
Doesn't sound free to me, going out, working, serving people, creating value in the marketplace? You might want to stay home and watch Netflix all day or go golfing, or go to the range or drive cars. I don't know what you like to do with your free time, but whatever it is, you would probably do that, if given the choice, but you need to discipline yourself to get to that freedom. [03:02.6]
The paradox I’m going to talk about in this episode is about your mindset. I'm going to tell you what it is now and then I’m going to explain this setup. After that, I’m going to give you some detail as to why you need to address this paradox in your life. We're going to start with the “what?” Then I’m going to give you a little more detail. Then we're going to go to the “why?”
Here is the paradox. Your beliefs are incredibly important, but you must put yourself in a position where they don't matter. One more time. Your beliefs are incredibly important, but you must put yourself in a position where they don't matter.
And I’ve read a lot. I mean, read a lot, like, a “lot” lot of self-improvement, law-of-attraction books over the years. I’ve read everything Napoleon Hill has ever written. I’ve also read Norman Vincent Peale, James Allen, Neville Goddard, and more, just tons and tons of these books. [03:57.0]
And there are some people who will say that the law of attraction is just to scam. People used to sell books. That might be the case today because everyone is just regurgitating what people wrote about nearly 100 years ago, and even the stuff that people were writing about 100 ago, they were digging deep into texts from mystics, from different countries. People in Africa were writing about it. People in Asia were writing about it. People in Europe were writing about it, hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago. This is the wisdom of the ages condensed.
But each person had different, I don't want to say “spin on things,” because it's not like they were all drawing from the same source. They were drawing from different sources. But about the scam thing, I find it really hard to believe that these people were all independently coming to the same conclusion in order to scam people. I mean, are there scam artists in every group of human beings? Absolutely. But the chances of everyone doing it independently and coming to the same conclusion is virtually zero. [04:56.0]
And in my experience, the hardest part of the law of attraction is getting the belief part, right? Because there are lots of people who write about “Oh, you need to believe in order to achieve. You need to believe that anything is possible. Think big,” and all this other stuff. But the basic idea of the law of attraction is that you become what you think about, and, yes, you do need to have the belief part. If you can hold something in your mind, you can hold it in your hand, but it's not easy.
Some of these productions—I want to use the word “production” because that's really what it has become—they’ll say, Just think about it. Recite these mantras and you can manifest it into your life. It's just goofy, because you can manifest or try to recite these little lines all you want. You can write stuff on your little index card and that can be helpful, but you really need to believe that it's possible that if you've only ever made $50,000 per year and you're the highest earner in your social group, it's going to be very, very difficult for you to believe that you can 10x your income, because you have no basis for it. You have no reason whatsoever to believe. [05:58.6]
Tony Robbins described it in one of his books. I think it was Awaken the Giant Within about a stool. It's a three-legged stool and you need to have these legs to support your belief. If you only have one leg, then your stool is going to fall over. If you only have two legs on your stool, it's probably going to fall over. But if you have three or more legs, all coming from this stool, it's going to be great and it's going to support you.
A lot of people who read these law-of-attraction books and get started down the whole “believe in yourself” path, they start by setting these big audacious goals, but it's hard to truly believe them. If you've increased your income over the years from $30,000 to $40,000, then to $50,000, go ahead and set a goal to get your income to $75,000. This will be easier to believe, and it will be easier to internalize, which is important.
I use that word intentionally, internalize, because you will have evidence to back it up. If you've already lost five pounds, you can believe that you can lose 10. If you've lost 10, you can believe that you can lose 20, and so on and so forth. The same is true with money. The same is true with health, with fitness, with relationships, with everything in life. You need to have evidence to back it up. You need to have a reason why you should believe what it is that you want. [07:13.3]
That's my little tidbit about the law of attraction. I hope that helps someone. Now back to the point of the show. Your beliefs and your mindset are incredibly important, but you must get to a point where they don't matter.
Let's start with the first part, your beliefs, your mental state, your mindset. This is critical because the way you think is what gets the ball rolling on your goals. Until you change the way you think, you won't get started on your goals.
Earl Nightingale had a recording called The Strangest Secret. I think it was released in 1956, I could be wrong, and I think it was the first spoken-word recording to go gold. I think at this point it may have gone platinum, but I think it went gold back in the ’50s. Sold a bunch of copies, right? In that recording, he mentioned that a woman who does not think about baking an apple pie for dinner tonight will not think of looking up the recipe for apple pie. [08:06.3]
That may sound too simple, but it's incredibly profound. You can apply this to any and all of the goals in your life, because without the original thought of your goal, there's no motivation to do anything to accomplish goals. He gave another example of someone who is driving, I think, from New York to St. Louis. If the person doesn't have a map, doesn't think of driving, or doesn't think of driving to St. Louis at all, then that person won't look for a map. The person won't get in the car. The person won't start the car. The person won't go down the road, because there is no catalyst. There's no spark. [08:38.7]
Hey, financial advisors. If you'd like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James' monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, “The James Pollard Inner Circle”. When you join today, you'll get more than $1,000 worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren't available anywhere else. Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more.
One belief that holds people back is the “too good to be true” belief. People don't truly, or some people, not everyone, of course, but some people don't truly believe that their lives can be changed quickly and dramatically, and this is true in marketing. I see it all the time.
People can be presented with something like email marketing and ignore it for months or years because deep down they think it's too good to be true, or they don't believe that they deserve such great results and it's something they have to deal with with their own self-esteem, and it's also true in business. The perfect deal or opportunity could knock on some people's door right now and they wouldn't answer because they wouldn't think it's real. If you're one of these people, I encourage you to really dig down and get the data for yourself. Remove yourself from your feelings. We're going to talk a little bit more about that.
You want to let the numbers, the facts and the research search speak for themselves. I know this works because I’m a naturally skeptical person, too. I’ve had to overcome a lot of skepticism. I would look at things and I’d be like, That's bullcrap, it won't work. That's bullcrap, it won't work. I would just shut myself out of these opportunities and it sucked for the longest time. [10:10.8]
But when I began saying yes, when I began looking at something, if it seemed, if one person says, Oh, that's too good to be true, I’d be like, Let's just try it. Let's see what happens. What if things go wrong? Can I recover? If the answer is yes, then we're moving, right?
The way I did this was by leaning into the facts, and let me use weight loss, as an example. If I went up to someone who didn't know anything about healthy weight loss and I said, “This time, next year, you can be 50 pounds lighter,” that person might not believe me because it sounds too good to be true. Still a healthy accepted standard for weight loss is one to two pounds per week. If this person consumes 500 or fewer calories than he or she burns per day, that person will lose one pound of weight per week. Over the course of a year, one pound, 52 weeks. That's actually 52 pounds, slightly more than what seemed to be too good to be true. [11:04.5]
That's rooted in science. It has nothing to do with a person's belief, nothing at all. I don't care if the person believes it's too good to be true. If that person maintains a caloric deficit for long enough, that person will lose weight. Belief has nothing to do with it, but the person needs to get started.
Now, I do think there's something to be said for mindset and how it can affect your results. There have been studies done where athletes who visualize themselves performing an activity, they do better than athletes who don't visualize. It's incredible stuff. If you just Google it, “athletes visualization”, you'll go down this rabbit hole and you'll see some crazy, crazy cool things.
In the marketing world, I’ve seen two separate financial advisors apply the exact same tactics, I mean, down to the letter and get different results, and I talk about this in the beginning of an Inner Circle Bonus called “the five keys to successful financial advisors.” I mentioned, I think, cold call scripts there, because I’ve seen two advisors use the exact same script and get different results. [12:06.3]
That's frustrating, but there are still a lot of intangible variables there, and when you're on the phone, people can pick up on your enthusiasm, if you believe in yourself, how you're feeling, those kinds of things. We're incredibly finely-tuned machines when it comes to detecting this stuff. That could explain why this happens with little tips and tactics, but the way to make your beliefs irrelevant is to completely remove yourself from the outcome.
I’ve talked a lot about outcome-independence, about eliminating neediness. Neediness destroys sales. It destroys conversions. It totally wrecks them. But in some of my marketing materials, I also talk about the use of force where you can force yourself to achieve your goals and this is kind of a weird hybrid of the two, because you can facilitate true, I mean, real outcome-independence through force.
Here's the paradox again. Your beliefs are incredibly important, but you must put yourself in a position where they don't matter. How much could your life change if you made your beliefs irrelevant? [13:10.4]
Let's say that you don't think very highly of yourself. You're scared of certain things. You're anxious. Maybe you're depressed. What if you made all that stuff just totally irrelevant? Now, of course, you must believe it's possible to attain your goals. Remember the woman who doesn't think of baking an apple pie for dinner tonight won't think of looking up the recipe, so you need the catalyst. You need the spark to create the ecosystem.
But once it's created, you can remove yourself from it. Gravity doesn't care what I believe. If I jump from a building, I’m going to fall. It doesn't matter if I’m depressed or if I’m euphoric. It doesn't matter if I’ve recited 10,000 affirmations that morning or if I’ve listened to a motivational speech, or if I’ve watched a motivational or an inspirational video on YouTube. It does not matter. I'm going to fall because of gravity. [13:59.0]
Now, here's a little mental journey I want you to take with me. I want you to imagine that there's someone from 1980, who believed that the stock market is a scam. It's a casino. It's rigged. Anyone who invests in the stock market loses money.
I want you to imagine that the stock market fairy visited that person, like the tooth fairy, and invested some of the person's money in the stock market. Would that person's beliefs impact the stock market? No, not one bit. That person's money would grow, no matter what the beliefs were. One of the most important concepts I keep hammering home on this podcast episode is the idea that you should be-- or in the podcast, many episodes, not just this one, but many episodes before. I did an entire episode, I think it was about the financial advisor who hit a million dollars per year.
It's the idea that you should create marketing assets, and one reason for this is that marketing assets will work independently of your beliefs, just like the stock market would have grown independently of that person's beliefs. Your marketing will get results, no matter what you're thinking in your head. Again, you must have some level of belief in order to create the marketing assets in the first place. [15:15.0]
That's the paradox, because I don't want you to remain stuck; I want you to get started. Martin Luther King said, “You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” That's great. Great advice in business. Some of you listening to my voice right now are stuck because you want to see the whole staircase.
Imagine if your clients did the same thing with you. Imagine if they didn't do anything with their finances because they wanted to see every single little movement plotted out for the next 20 years. They would never do anything. They'd be paralyzed. Even if you tried to outline everything, it would be worthless because things change. I mean, wait a week and then everything changes anyway. [15:56.5]
That's why I intentionally use the word “ecosystem”, because an ecosystem is not static. It's not linear. An ecosystem changes, adapts, and evolves over time. Sure, you can nurture the ecosystem. You can change things. You have that power. But as long as the rain, the sunshine and the soil are in place, trees will grow without you. They don't care about your belief.
One more time so you really get it. You would need to believe to plant the seed in the first place. You must plant the seed. The tree cannot grow if you don't plant the seed, but once this seed is planted, then it will grow without you.
So, your beliefs, your mindset, the way you think, the way you approach life and business, it is incredibly important. It is a wonderful tool. I have an entire product about this called “How Successful Financial Advisors Think.” If you're an Inner Circle member, you've heard me talk about mindset a whole bunch, and I’ve also talked about systems, about creating processes, about creating marketing assets that work independently of you. But you need both. You need to plant the seed, but once the seed is planted, that tree will grow no matter what you think of it. [17:09.3]
I hope you enjoy this episode. If you like this kind of thing, let me know. If you liked this podcast, then leave a positive review. Share it online and help a brother out—and I will catch you next time.
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