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: Financial advisors, welcome to another week, another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. This week, I have brought you a guest, and we're going to talk about something that I rarely talk about in the financial advisor marketing world, and that is mindset, partially because I don't really know that much about mindset. I mean, yes, I've read a couple mindset books and I can talk to people about how I think, but I obviously don't feel qualified enough to talk to tens of thousands of financial advisors who are listening about mindset. [01:01.3]
But I bought someone who is qualified. I brought Nina Cooke. She is an authority on mindset for six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs. She understands the relationship between mindset and profit, which is something that I just don't bring up that often, and a lot of financial advisors have requested me to bring this up, so I'm glad to have her on today.
Nina, who are you? What are you all about? And how did you get involved in the financial advisor world?
Nina: James, thank you for inviting me on. A pleasure to be here. Who am I? I live in England. I have a deep, deep, passionate interest in people and how we think, and you put it so brilliantly, what is the link between mindset and profit? How is it that some people become very successful, they make a lot of money, but they also have a nice work–life balance?
If someone is making a lot of money and they don't have a life, that, to me, is not successful. It’s people who are able to have that balance of having the lifestyle they want, spending time doing things that they love, and spending time with family, friends and all the rest of it. Those are the people who really, really make it big. [02:13.8]
The rest of the people who are entrepreneurs, have their own businesses, why do they struggle? I've sort of made it a complete passion of mine to try and understand why that happens. I've done a lot of research, a lot of trainings, a lot of trying to find the strategy to help my clients to build their wealth and have a really nice lifestyle by changing their thinking, their habits, their belief system, which then leads them to change their behavior and create the habits that support the goals that they want, because a lot of times, people set goals which they're not particularly emotionally involved with. [03:00.2]
They just think, I should be earning x amount, but the goal feels very alien to them. It feels like outside of them, far, far away, and then they try and work towards that goal, but they haven't changed their habits and the habits are still self-sabotaging. They're not doing the outreach. They're not following up. They’re not doing the marketing. They’re not doing the sales calls properly. So, it's all very well having a goal, but if the mindset and the habits are out of sync with the goal, they're going to keep failing.
I want to find that synergy, that strategy, which creates the mindset that supports the goals, and then the goals become very emotional to that person and they feel inspired by their goals and then they become consumed by their goals, and that means they do what it takes to get that goal and there's that harmony that comes together. That's what I really, really enjoy doing. [03:59.4]
How I came to start working with financial advisors, I started working with coaches and consultants. Then I got introduced to the world of financial advisors by a guy called Dan Cuprill, who is a fantastic financial advisor, and he said, “I've got an online training for financial advisors, but some of them just don't finish the training. They get distracted. They give up. They get discouraged. They lose motivation.” He said, “I know it's their mindset that's stopping them from finishing the course and getting the results. Can you create a mindset training for them that addresses their particular challenges?”
So, I did. I created a mindset training, which he clicked on to his course. Then we wrote a book together, co-authored a book. We basically took the course and we put it, most of it, added new things into the book. It's called Renegade Mindset: A Financial Advisor's Guide to a Peak Performance Mindset. [04:56.1]
When I started working with financial advisors, it was obvious to me that the challenges were all the same. Whatever industry you're in, the challenges are mostly the same. You might use different terminology for the different industries, but we're all people and we have the same fears. We have the same hopes, largely, and we let the same thing stop us from being more successful. By being more successful, I mean making more money and having a really nice lifestyle. We do it ourselves.
I know you're the expert in marketing and sales. You could put the best, proven marketing strategy in front of two advisors who have different mindsets. One advisor will look at that strategy and say, “Yep, yeah,” and what they'll do is they will understand the strategy. They will take the time to understand it. Then they will make a decision to accept it, to take it on, and then they will apply that strategy consistently. They may not get the results the first time, but they'll tweak it and they'll keep going with that strategy until it works for them. [06:04.8]
The second financial advisor who is sitting with exactly the same marketing strategy in front of them will look at it and I think, This is a good strategy, yeah, and they'll sort of read it and maybe watch the videos, etc., and they’ll say, “Okay, tomorrow I'm going to start applying it.” They start and they get to a bit, they think, This is quite difficult. This bit means I've got to go out and network, or I've got to do this or create this. I don't know how to do that and it seems like hard work. It feels a bit difficult for me, so I'll just do something else in my business and I'll come back to it later. Then they see another new program and they sign up for that, and that marketing strategy gets put to one side.
This is how we do it. We self-sabotage all the time. We talk ourselves out of doing things that are in our interest, and Earl Nightingale--
James: Oh, I love Earl. Earl Nightingale, yeah. [07:00.0]
Nina: Yes. He said something so fantastic on one of his recordings. It was his big project to figure out why some people are successful and most people aren't, and he said there are two types of hardships that we all face. One hardship is doing things-- We will want more, but most of us aren't prepared to do what it takes to have more.
The first hardship is to do things to be successful, and most people will say, “Oh, it's really difficult to do that activity” to “I don't know how to create a program. It's really difficult to do that. I don't know how to do that. It's going to take a lot of time, and it may not work, so I'm not going to do it, because it's too hard. It's a hardship for me to do that.” [07:50.0]
But very successful people will do it because their goal is so important to them that they will take on that hardship of creating a new habit, learning a new skill to get to that goal, because they know that when they start doing it, it feels difficult—it's uncomfortable. It may be boring. It may take a lot of time—but as you start doing that habit, it starts getting easier and easier. Certainly, the beginning of it is difficult and then it gets easier and easier. Now, you are the master of this, because when you decide to do something, you do it day after day after day.
James: I'm like a robot, yes.
Nina: Yeah, you have a string of winning days, which is quite unusual. That’s the first hardship, to do something new in order to achieve your goals, create a new habit and new behavior.
The second hardship that most of us settle for is the hardship of disappointment, the hardship of being disappointed with your life, settling for less, wishing you could have more, but just saying, “This is all I can have, because I'm not the sort of person who can be very successful, who can make a lot of money. Other people in my family haven't done it. So, this is an okay life and this is what I just have to be okay with,” and that's a hardship to settle for disappointment. [09:12.2]
Out of those two hardships, let's say 80% of people settle for the hardship of disappointment because they stay in their comfort zone, and they think, It's easy for me to make this decision, and let's say 20% of people settle for the hardship of doing what it takes to achieve their goals. We are actually able to make this decision every moment of our lives, and if we become aware we have this decision—so, when something feels difficult or new, or it's going to feel uncomfortable for me to do this, if I put myself out there. And what if people don't want to hear from me? What if it doesn't work?—when we get to that stage, it's really good to be aware, which hardship am I settling for right now? Which decision am I making? [10:03.2]
Am I making the decision, “Okay, let me try it and let me make this into a habit”? It could be reaching out to, I don't know, to 3x prospects every day, 15 a week, or it could be going to some sort of networking or sitting down and actually following through with a marketing strategy that you've already paid for. It could be that hardship that you settle for, but in the long term, that's what's going to move you further along, because the other hardship, settling for mediocrity and disappointment, that's what keeps us stuck in life.
James: I think when I was a guest on your podcast, I talked a little bit about fear, and I know I talked about being a doomsayer, basically envisioning the worst possible scenario, and not necessarily anxiety because anxiety is this fear of things that have not happened and there's a low possibility if something happened. That's the psychological definition. [11:01.7]
But I feel like that mindset has helped me in the sense that I'm able to view the worst possible scenario of something happening, like the pain of disappointment, and asking myself, “Am I okay with that? What do I need to do to avoid that if I'm not okay with it?” That is kind of how I've structured my life, so I identify a hundred percent with what you're saying.
Earl Nightingale—I love his stuff. I love The Strangest Secret. I love Lead the Field. I mean, I listen to that all the time. That is, maybe that's one of the reasons why I think the way that I do. It’s because I've conditioned myself with people like Earl Nightingale, people like Jim Rohn, people like Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy and Napoleon Hill.
You told me that you were reading Think and Grow Rich. I read that and just followed it, and it worked for me and that's pretty much it. When people ask about what are your favorite books and things that you like, I mention Think and Grow Rich, and I was elated, overjoyed that you shared that, too, because now I have someone else where when financial advisors ask, I can say, “Well, Nina said it.” So, what have you learned from Think and Grow Rich? [12:07.3]
Nina: I've learned the biggest lesson is persistence, and the boring word “repetition,” and we were just talking before we went on that we're getting ingrained into society pretty instant gratification. We try marketing strategy or we try a sales strategy. We maybe say, “I'm going to ask for referrals.” We try the first few clients, don't get any response. “Well, the referral strategy doesn't work. Five people, not one of them gave me a referral.” Bin that, go on to the next thing. Bin that, go on to the next thing. We're lacking a persistent mindset.
Any new habit we want to cultivate, we have to practice it. It's with everything from anything from when we were young, learning how to walk, tie our shoelaces, learn to write, learn to read, being older and the habits we want to create, learning an instrument, getting good at sport, a hobby. Whatever it is, we keep practicing it and doing it, and doing it and doing it. [13:12.8]
At the beginning it feels very difficult, feels strange trying to learn to play the guitar. You don't know what you're doing with your fingers. You can't read the notes, etc. Two weeks down, if you’ve practiced every single day, say, for 30 minutes, two weeks down the road, you're becoming more comfortable. You're getting insights of how you can do it better. Anything, if you want to be good at it, to master it, requires persistence and consistency, and I think that is my biggest takeaway.
I follow all the grand old masters you mentioned in terms of personal development. They have common threads running through their teaching and one of them is, do it every day. Focus on your mindset every single day. Don't expect to do it for 10 minutes once a month and get great results, and then say, “I didn't get the results. Therefore, it doesn't work.” It works. It works, as long as you do it, if you get good at it. As you said, you read the book and then you followed it. You applied it. [14:13.8]
Being a student, as Bob Proctor says, being a student isn't just reading something and listening to it once or twice and saying, “Oh, I've done that.” Being a student is understanding the concept, really understanding it. He said, I mean, he bought—he was told or given the book. He was told to buy or he was given the book—Think and Grow Rich, I think, in 1961 or so. He read it every single day. He studied it every single day, and what he would do was he had this bookrest and he would put the book on the bookrest and open it, a page, and he would keep on that page for days, for weeks, until he was applying what was written on that page, until he understood it so deeply. [15:00.0]
So, it's worth taking time and giving something your full attention to really listen to it, to really understand it, and if you agree with it, then make the decision, “Yes, I'm going to apply it.” Actually make that decision and then apply it, and if you keep applying it and you follow through, and you do exactly what the teacher is telling you to do, likely, you're going to get a good result.
How many people who are listening have bought programs, marketing programs, who have worked with great marketing experts like you, but they haven't applied the teachings?
James: So many.
Nina: And, therefore, it hasn't worked for them.
James: Yes.
Nina: And then go on to the next shiny object. But the thing is, they take that same mindset to the next program, which is “I did 10% of it. Didn't work. I did the first 10%, got to a difficult bit. Oh, I can't do that,” and they went off to the next one. That’s why there's only a minority of entrepreneurs who are really, really established and very successful, because they will suffer the hardships to get to that level and then they get the rewards. [16:09.7]
You see, we don't know what's on the other side of taking action because we don't take the action. Often, we talk ourselves out of it, but there's a consequence to taking the action and we don't get to see the consequence on the other side, which is the result, the better result than we're currently getting.
James: Sometimes I feel handcuffed, because at least here in the United States, we have the FTC and they regulate marketing communications and there are certain things that you can say and you can't say. One of the things you can't say is you can't cherry pick testimonials and say, “This person made $10 million in 60 seconds with this program,” or whatever. You actually need substantiation. You need proof. That's why I'm always saying things to financial advisors who are listening, things like, “Your mileage may vary” or “Results are not guaranteed,” simply because I'm trying to follow the law. [16:57.0]
Sometimes when financial advisors will email me and say things like, “I'm nervous about this,” or “I don't know if this will work,” they basically have mindset questions. I just really wish I could be like, Look, thousands of people have done this. Thousands of people have gotten results. They've done this, they've gotten clients. They've made more money, whatever, because I've seen the emails. I have all the stuff that financial advisors have sent me, but I can't do that because I'm hamstrung by these regulations. The only thing I really can do is say, “Look, I believe in you. You could do it. Just trust me on this. Go through this process.”
I'll give you a specific example. In this podcast, the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, the mid-roll ad is for the Inner Circle Newsletter, and the bonus offered in this podcast are these seven objection-busting emails. So many financial advisors have gotten results with those. Just last week, I had someone email me. I thought this was a new subscriber. He joined months ago, and he was like, I've been deliberating on whether or not to incorporate emojis in the subject line. Seriously, emojis, for months. Months. [18:04.8]
I'm like, You could have had this whole thing up and running the first day. But there was something in his mind that prevented him from being that student and putting it into practice, and if I could unlock that for him and solve that for him and for other financial advisors, I would be in a much better place and they would, too. That’s always fascinated me, what you've described.
Nina: Yeah, there's a risk involved in doing something different and the risk is it's going to fail. I'm going to fail. It's not going to work, and therefore, I don't want to think of myself as a failure, so I'm just not going to do it. They almost wait for success to fall out of the sky -
James: Yes.
Nina: - someone to knock on their door and say, “Here you go. It's here.”
James: “You deserve it now.” Yes. [18:53.8]
Nina: Yeah, it’s not how it works. And “deserving” is such an important word. It's used a lot, “I'm not worth it. I don't deserve it,” but, really, that is what is at the heart of people's lack of confidence, lack of self-belief. “I'm not worthy of it. I don't deserve it. It's not for me. It's for other people, but it's not for me. Therefore, I'm not going to go for it.” We have this negative self-talk and we listen to it. It's so powerful. It feels so true. It keeps us locked in our little prison and this is the self-image we have of ourselves.
Self-image is such an interesting thing, because there's two parts to our self-image. There's the outer self-image, our parents, how we walk, how we talk, how people see us. It's like our shell. Then we have the inner self-image, how we see ourselves. Do we see ourselves as a failure? Do we see ourselves as a loser? Do we see ourselves as a 100k-per-year person? We see ourselves as not having any value? People don't want to work with us? We can't work with wealthy clients? “I went to that sort of school. I was brought up in this sort of family. That's my position in life.” [20:12.2]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
Nina: The self-image we have of ourselves is just an impression that we have of ourselves. But the brilliant thing is that when we do the inner work, when we're determined to change our lives, then the self-image part is the key part to work on, because you can change that self-image that you have of yourself.
It's so interesting. I work with clients and we do lots of different stuff. We set big goals and then we work on self-image, and we work on habits and all of that stuff. But with a self-image, it's not set in stone. It's just your perception, and our perceptions can change about anything. We can change our minds about anything. [21:57.4]
We can change our mind about people and films, and religion and politics, and everything. We can change our mind about everything and your self-image is just another thing you can change your mind about. But you have to know what you want in order to go towards that change. You have to know what you want in life. What is your goal?
I would encourage anyone who's listening to write down their current goal. Just write it down on a piece of paper. It may be “I want to increase my AUM to x” or “I want to increase my profits,” or “I want to earn this much per month.” Whatever it is, write it down, and they take a look at it and see whether you feel emotionally connected to it, whether it inspires you or not.
I bet for 99% of the people who write down their goal, they look at it and they think. That is so dull and boring. There is nothing in there that I feel emotionally attached to—and if you're not motivated by your goal, you're not going to change your behavior and your habits to align with that goal. It just feels like nothing. It feels boring. You're not going to get involved in it. [23:13.6]
Create a crazy, crazy fantasy goal, a big goal, so big and out there, you just think, That's just pie in the sky. Create a goal like that. Write it down. I've written down a business and a personal desire I carry around with me all the time. I look at them every day. I write them out. These are my focus. I want them so deeply embedded inside me, inside my subconscious, that I'm just saying them in my head automatically all day long. I want to give my subconscious this message. “This is who I am. This is my self-image. This is my life.” Repetition. Do it every day. Do it every day until it just becomes second nature to you. [23:57.7]
That's one way to change your self-image—“I am the person who lives this life. This is who I am”—and the way to make it familiar is to decide who you want to be, decide what you want in life, write it, say it, record it, but spend time every single day focusing on your desires and being the person who has your desires.
It may sound boring. It may sound tedious. Some days I don't want to do this. I don't want to sit there and look at this and write it out and listen to the recording of it. Some days I don't want to do it, and the days I don't want to do it, I have worse days. I'm distracted. I'm more out of sorts with myself. I'm less productive on the days I don't do it. The days that I do it, I feel more fired up and motivated. [24:54.7]
I have a client. I have the most ideal client. He's a financial advisor. Everything I ask him to do, he does it. I said, “Write out your personal desire 33 times in the morning. Then write out your business desire 33 times in the afternoon, and write out another goal,” which he set for himself. “Write out before you go to sleep.”
On the next call, he said, “Do you know, I write out my business desire 33 times before I sit on my desk, and it keeps my mind so calm and I make great decisions, and it keeps me going till lunchtime until I write out my next goal. That keeps me going until the end of my working day. And then I write the next one before I go to sleep.” He gets big results. He gets big results. I mean, his business grows. He's selling rental properties. He's selling them because he's writing them down. He's focusing on the sale. It's not rocket science. It's the follow-through. That is what makes a difference in life. It’s the follow-through. [26:07.0]
James: Let's say that you have a financial advisor and this is a client of yours, and you explain these things. What I've discovered is that a lot of these things are simple, but people don't do them. There's even a story in the Bible about a guy named Naaman and he has leprosy. He's sick and he was told, “Just go in this river. Wash yourself here and you won't be sick anymore,” and he got angry. He was mad because he wanted some complex, complicated solution.
It's literally a biblical story. It has been around for thousands of years. People have gotten upset and angry and mad when the solution isn't super complex or doesn't meet their fantasy or imagination, however they view what they think they should get. So, let's say that you have someone and a financial advisor says to you, “That seems too simple. It can't possibly work.” What do you say then? [26:59.2]
Nina: The clients I take on, I wouldn't take on a client who didn't believe in my strategy and wasn't willing to do it.
James: Okay, I agree.
Nina: The proof is always in the pudding. If someone does everything I ask them to do, because I do a yearlong coaching programs, at the end of the year, they say to me, “I did everything you asked me to do, every single thing, and it didn't work,” that's fair and we would have a discussion about that. But I know if it hasn't worked for them, it's because they haven't done exactly what I asked them to do. I cannot make anyone sit down and do the daily mindset practice I set them. I can't, and they'd start changing their habits and behaviors. I cannot get anyone to do that. They have to make that decision. We're all adults.
What I do is, before I take on any client, I ask them, “Are you willing to do everything I ask you to do? Because otherwise you're going to be wasting your time and money, and you’re going to be wasting my time, because every time we talk, we're going to have the same conversation.” They're going to say, “I'm still stuck in the same place because I haven’t done the action steps you wanted me to do.” [28:10.0]
So, I choose my clients carefully because I want them to succeed. I really want them to succeed and I want our time together to be fruitful. I'm getting much, much better now at figuring out who is going to step up and transform their lives.
To be perfectly honest, there are so many different ways to get to the same result. As it is with marketing, you want more clients, more profit. There are so many marketing methods that will take you to the same destination and most of those marketing methods will work if you follow through with them. It's the same with personal development. There are certain basic fundamentals, which are that you have to set exciting, inspiring goals; you have to focus on them every day, and you have to start changing your actions and behavior so they align with your goals—and that's really the fundamentals. [29:18.0]
All the personal development gurus, they will all have different tools in their toolbox, but they agree on these fundamentals. When you take them and put them—Step 1: make sure you know what you want; Step 2: focus on it every day; Step 3: start aligning your actions and behaviors to your goals—that's really it. You could write it on a small piece of paper. You could write those three steps on a card and give them to 100 people. Maybe one person out of 100 will take those steps and run with them, and probably the rest of them will just say, “Do it for a few days. Didn't work. I'm going to try something else.”
James: That's been my experience as well, for sure, in the marketing world. Some people do it. Some people don't. [30:05.3]
I would like to try something interesting with you as we wind down the show. Financial advisors, we're recording this in February. A few days ago, Cha GPT released their deep research function and it has been incredible. I have the pro plan. It's the $200-per-month one. Financial advisors ask me questions about it. I'm like, Just get it yourself.
But jokes aside, one of the things I've been doing is I have been asking the deep research function to research the differences between six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs, eight-figure entrepreneurs, what their mindsets are like, what they do differently. I'd like to run some of these traits by you and get your take on them to see. Basically, it analyzed thousands of meta-analyses and studies, and research papers and books, and this is what it came up with.
The No. 1 most important thing, according to deep research is high conscientiousness, so organization, being dependable. Do you agree? Is that at least at the top of your list or near the top? [31:09.8]
Nina: For me, the top thing of being very successful is to make the decision that you will do what it takes -
James: Okay, I like that. I think that I would agree.
Nina: - to be successful, because there are our hardships along the way, things that you may have to sacrifice, etc., but they know that those hardships are short lived because those hardships slowly become habits, and habits become more comfortable. We get more comfortable as we create the habit. Yes, so that would be my number one thing. It's making that decision, you will do what it takes to have more in life.
James: Okay, I remember doing that myself. You mentioned earlier, like, No one in my family has done this, and I'm in a similar boat, but I thought to myself, No one in my family has done this, so I have to. I didn't think, No one in my family has done this, so I can't. I thought, I’ve got to do it. So, it’s just a different way. [32:09.1]
Nina: Yeah. But that's the interesting thing, James, because you made the conscious decision that you were going to do things differently to your family. It didn't matter that they maybe had similar incomes. You were going to do something different. Most people in life never make that conscious decision. They just drift through life. The awareness of the decisions you're making is the absolute key.
James: Okay, yeah, I agree with that, too. Another thing that it mentioned—there’s a list here, and this is ranked, by the way, so conscientious is the most important—second most important is something that many people would say I do not have is maybe high emotional stability. It says, “They handle stress and volatility better than most. Rather than making impulsive decisions, they remain calm, which allows them to stay committed to long-term strategies.” Is emotional stability important in your book? [33:07.8]
Nina: Yes, absolutely. Having a clear mind, making better decisions, not getting tugged in emotionally to what's going on outside of you, so you’re not just reacting by default and getting caught up in it. You're responding through that calmness, that steadiness, assessing the situation and then deciding what you're going to do. It’s actually slowing everything down inside of you and making the decision.
So, I think that is really, really important—and that high emotional stability comes from your self-image, your belief system, how safe you feel in life. The safer you feel life, the more you're able to take risks and you know and assess situations in a much more emotionally-stable way. [34:00.0]
James: Yeah, where you know that you're going to be able to get through whatever life throws your way. You've made that decision, going back to Step 1, the most important thing. You've made that decision. You're going to do it no matter what.
Nina: Yeah.
James: That that is that makes a lot of sense.
Nina: You kind of feel safe. You feel safe.
James: Right.
Nina: The safety net inside of you. You’ve got the confidence to [say], “Whatever happens, I can deal with this,” yeah, absolutely.
James: And I talked about that on your show, where I looked at my family members. I was like, these people were in the jungles of Vietnam and terrible things happened to them and others, and they saw crazy things. I mean, if you just google booby-traps in Vietnam, some of it is just brutal. So, to live through that and for me to complain about anything, it just sounds silly, and I think about that a lot. I mean, that's like an anchor point for me where, if there's a flat tire or my computer crashes, or someone fires me or I lose a bunch of money, or an estimate comes in at a couple of thousand dollars higher than I thought it was, it's nothing. It is absolutely nothing compared to what near relatives went through. Take that for what you will, financial advisors. [35:04.7]
I don't want to spend a ton of time. I just want me to make sure financial advisors get the rest of this list. After emotional stability, they have high non-conformity. I already know that's it, because we talked about that a lot. Likely to delay gratification, absolutely. We talked about that a little bit. High self-confidence, yes. High internal locus of control. You brought that up, too. So, I'm really impressed with you, Nina, because you are nailing this. You obviously know your stuff, because you are right there with this list. Then high resilience.
Then something that is interesting to me and I agree with this a hundred percent. The last thing on ChatGPT’s deep research list after analyzing thousands of research papers about success is high efficiency. It says, “They tend to be strategic about using the resources, time, money and energy. They minimize wasteful spending in their lives, allocate capital where it will generate the greatest returns”—maybe not always the greatest, but they build a foundation. That's what I've seen—“and they streamline their operations. The efficiency mindset compounds over time, contributing to sustained growth.” [36:11.0]
I thought that's something that I guess I've known but I've never really put into words so that these highly successful people are highly efficient, and I'd love to get your take on that.
Nina: Yes, high efficiency comes from having the focus. They're focused on the big picture, and they are willing and brave to take the actions which lead directly to results. It could be doing something really uncomfortable. It could be networking. It could be putting yourself out there. It could be making offers. It could be talking to lots of prospects. They’re willing to focus on the stuff that brings in the revenue, rather than wasting time fiddling around in their business on stuff which is just a waste of time, the busy work which doesn't lead to any revenue growth. [36:58.6]
They are focused just on doing the growth, the revenue-generating work, because even though it feels like a hardship to a lot of people, because those are the activities we avoid doing because it makes us uncomfortable, marketing, sales, all of that stuff, these people who are highly efficient. They know that's what they need to focus on in order to grow. They’ll maybe delegate stuff, delete other stuff, delay the other bits, because they just focus on the growth activities only.
James: I've seen that, too. For financial advisors who are listening and curious, I'll run this back to you again. Conscientiousness, emotional stability, non-conformity, delaying gratification, self-confidence, internal locus of control, resilience and efficiency—and those are the traits. I basically asked it, “Look, give me the most proven, scientifically-validated, backed ways” or “differences between eight-figure entrepreneurs and everyone else,” and that is what it came up with, and Nina hit, almost, actually, yeah, every single one—every single one. Not almost, every single one—on the head in our conversation. [38:09.8]
This has been fantastic. If financial advisors want to learn more about you and what you do, where should they go?
Nina: This is a resource I've created, especially for financial advisors who do not know why they cannot make more money and have more success, that this is a way for them to identify exactly which limiting beliefs they have blocking them from making more money and being more successful. Very quick to go through, but it will give them a huge amount of insight in their thinking and how they're sabotaging themselves.
James: It looks like that is resources.ninacooke.co.uk/scorecard-fa. I'm going to put this in the description, so you could just go do that, financial advisors. Go to the description and click the link. Just so you know, that's what it is. If you see resources.ninacooke.co.uk/scorecard-fa, that's the link. Click on that and it will take you there. It looks like it is a “Millionaire Mindset Mastery Scorecard.” I love that concept, by the way. I love the scorecard. I love quizzes and things like that. I love that. I love taking them, so I might take this one. [39:13.3]
Nina: They don't lie, do they? They give you a good snapshot of your thinking, your thoughts, your belief system, right now, and then you can use that information any way you want, but at least now you are aware.
James: Right, and you have a starting point so you can figure out where you want to go, but you have to know where you are coming from.
Thank you so much for sharing this. Thank you for coming on and talking about this. This is a much-requested topic. I appreciate it greatly.
Nina: It's been an absolute pleasure. I've really enjoyed it.
James: All right, financial advisors, another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing in the can, and I will catch you next week. [39:48.7]
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