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: Over the years, I've shared productivity and work structure ideas about how to get more done without burning out, and every so often, someone responds with some version of “Try that with kids” or “That only works if you don't have a family,” and I get what's being implied. The assumption is that once children enter the picture, the rules change and any advice about productivity, consistency or progress becomes unrealistic. But it's not really true. [01:00.3]
Before I go any further, one quick note. I just want to get this out of the way. I am a very private person. If you're in my world, you already know that. I almost never share anything about my personal life. I'm mentioning this now in this Financial Advisor Marketing podcast episode only because it changes how the advice is interpreted.
My wife and I recently had another child. My Inner Circle members were actually the first people to know, because the due date was actually the same day as the November office hours session. So, I began that office hours session by telling them, at any moment, I might get a text message from my wife that she was going into labor, and I wanted to designate someone as the person who would take over the hosting responsibilities in case I had to leave, kind of like being in the exit row of a plane. “Do you accept the responsibility that comes with being in an exit row?” Kind of like that.
Fortunately, we were able to conduct the office hours session normally, and she went into labor much, much later. I'm recording this episode in mid-December. In the past month, I've been spending time with my new child and doing the things that come with being a parent to a newborn, and I'm sharing this because the idea that kids invalidate productivity principles is just complete and utter nonsense. I mean, it really is. [02:09.8]
One of my biggest pet peeves is when financial advisors use their children as justification for being disorganized, inconsistent or passive in their businesses. Stop using your kids as excuses. It is lame. You are a clown if you do that. Kids do not break productivity principles. They expose whether you ever had real ones.
When financial advisors say goofy stuff like, “Try that with children, LOL,” or “That doesn't work if you have kids,”what the financial advisors usually mean is they were relying on excess time. They were relying on motivation, energy spikes and brute force, and that does not work with kids. Children remove those crutches.
Here's arguably the biggest lesson I've ever learned about how to balance parenthood and business. When you don't have a family, inefficiency is simply inconvenient. When you do have a family, inefficiency is expensive. It is so expensive. Lots of financial advisors don't even think of it in terms of expensive vs. non-expensive or opportunity cost, but I'm telling you, you need to. [03:09.3]
What do I mean? Before children being busy vs. productive doesn't make much of a difference. You have a ton of time to burn. You could just brute force your way through it. But after having children, every second of wasted time is magnified. I'll give you some examples.
Example No. 1: needing to decide what to work on every single week or month, or quarter, etc. Advisors sometimes tell me they want to stay flexible, and what that usually means is they burn mental energy every Monday morning, deciding what deserves their attention. By the time they decide, half the week is gone.
Example No.2: learning without direction. It boggles my mind how much time people waste listening to all sorts of podcasts, even this one, watching YouTube channels, reading all of these random books, saving tactics for later, going through articles. It's just a lot of stuff. [03:59.4]
Before children, it kind of feels like growth, because you can pick one thing from a four-hour podcast or whatever, and it's kind of worth it, but after children, it's just intellectual chatter. You don't need more on your digital bookshelf. You need the right ideas and you need to implement them.
Consuming ideas without a decision framework is a recipe for anxiety, and we're going to talk about decisions and how to implement all of this stuff, but it's no wonder so many financial advisors are on edge these days. They feel like they have no control. They're just worried about everything. They have a stick up their butt because they're just consuming all this information, and it's just chatter, really.
Example No.3 is rebuilding the same conclusions repeatedly. They ask questions like, “Should I raise my fees?” “Should I have a niche?” “Should I niche down more?” “Should I advertise here or there, or anywhere?” “Should I simplify my offer?” They ask the same questions again and again because they never anchor to a decision. [04:56.4]
You're going to hear this again and again about the decision part, and it's one of the big inefficiency spots that I see among financial advisors. Simply having someone tell them what to do, like I do with my Inner Circle members, is one of the most valuable things that they can have, period, because it changes everything.
Example No.4 is custom-building their marketing and trying to do everything custom in their businesses. It is also extremely wild to me how much time financial advisors waste trying to figure everything out themselves. They try to piecemeal things together when, again, simply having someone tell them what to do would be much more efficient.
Now, that doesn't mean having someone like me come in and do the thinking for you. I'm not doing the thinking for you necessarily. I mean, I help you think through certain things. I assist you with your thinking, but I'm not doing the thinking for you.
Example No.5: needing to be present in their businesses 24/7. If your marketing stops, the minute you stop paying attention, then your business owns you. Parents need businesses that keep working while life interrupts. That's exactly what I design everything around. [06:04.6]
When you have young children, specifically, the highest leverage move is not to just try harder. It is not to brute force. It is not to learn more. It's to reduce the number of decisions standing between you and your progress, because you still need to make decisions. You still need to implement, but you want to reduce the number of decisions to the ones that matter the most. That is why advisors who stay engaged during these seasons usually feel calmer. They're not busier. They're not stressed. They're calmer and they're far more productive.
I’ll give you very specific examples of productivity advice I've given over the years, and the pushback, the really silly pushback that I've received.
I suggest time blocking all the time. People say that kids make time blocking impossible because schedules change, but the reality is that kids simply make unstructured time a little bit more dangerous. That's all it is. Time blocking just becomes looser. It does not become useless. Blocks start becoming ranges instead of these minute by minute calendars, okay? You cannot have a minute-by-minute calendar with children. I mean, I guess you could, but you just have to be very adaptable. [07:12.0]
I also suggest having fixed start times for when you begin your work. People will say stuff like, “Oh, kids wake up at random hours. I can't predict that,” and that's true, but fixed start times are just about momentum, not perfection. Besides, what else are you going to do? What are you going to do? Are you just going to give up? Are you going to not do anything? That's really silly. Come on. Actually, now that I mention it, that is exactly what a lot of financial advisors do. They just give up and don't do anything.
I also recommend having defined stopping points, so not only do you know when you're going to start your work, but you also know when you're going to end your work. The rebuttal to that advice is so silly, and the whole “Try that with kids, LOL” people, they say that you can't predict when you'll be interrupted—but you don't need to. Defined stopping points are there to reduce the friction you feel when restarting a task. That is the whole point of having them. It's because interruptions are guaranteed. You're doing it because you're going to get interrupted. [08:09.6]
It's not just with business either. It's also with people's personal lives. They'll say things like, “I don't have time for exercise with children.” My friend, I recently shared on LinkedIn that I completed 472 workouts in 2025. That works out to be more workouts throughout the year than there are days. Do you know why?
Sure, I did cardio in the morning sometimes and then came back for weights, but a lot of it is because I had to be conscious of my time. If I had to cut a workout short, I would do it and then come back later. That would count as two workouts in my tracking app. I use Hevy. H-E-V-Y. If you finish your workout and you start again later, they count as two.
So, if I planned on doing something for 45 minutes, and I was at the 32 minute mark and I needed to stop, I would stop tracking in Hevy, the workout app, and then I would come back to finish the other 13 minutes. I did not skip it. I did not say, “Oh, well, screw it. I'm going to go on about my day. Forget this. I can't do it anymore.” I am accountable to myself. [09:09.0]
If you are raising young children, one of the worst things you can do is build a business that depends on constant improv. You are not an actor on Saturday Night Live. You are not improving in your business. The best thing you can do is follow a clear set of instructions from someone who has already thought through the tradeoffs.
To be clear, this is not some theory that I have. I am not sharing information that I read in some book somewhere or ideas that worked back when life was simpler. I know this works because I am actively doing it right now. I am running my business. I am producing content. I am showing up for Inner Circle members up to the literal minute my wife could have gone into labor. How is that for dedication? [09:48.8]
I am maintaining consistency all while raising young children and protecting my time and attention. That is exactly why I am so intolerant of inefficiency. I don't have the time, I don't have the luxury of debating the same decisions over and over. I don't have the bandwidth to reinvent systems that already exist. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, and I certainly do not have time for businesses that only work when everything goes right. [10:13.5]
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.
I think about how marketing strategies can operate in conditions like that under constant interruption. So, when I tell Inner Circle members what to do, it's not coming from abstraction. It's not because I read some Amazon bestseller, okay? I am not repackaging and rehashing some information. It is coming from decisions I have already made, trade-offs I have already tested, and systems I am actively relying on. I am walking the same path. I am under the same constraints, with the same pressures, and that's why I can be so direct.
If you want to keep improvising and blaming your circumstances, that path is always available to you. If you want to take it, cool. You and I are probably not going to jive together, but best of luck to you. [11:52.3]
If you want a business that thrives under pressure with real-world advice from someone who is actively living in it, then something like the Inner Circle is probably for you. I'm just bringing that up, keeping it real with you, because that's legitimately like you're probably a good fit if that's the case.
So, I strongly suggest checking it out over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. You don't have to sign up if you don't want to, but you should at least read all 8,000-plus words on the sign-up page so you can know what you're passing up if you decide not to join. I just want you to know what it is that you're saying no to if you say no.
I am recording this particular episode to let you know that my days are not predictable. My energy is not consistent. My schedule is not something I get to optimize like the productivity gurus suggest. Some days start early. Some don't. Some are calm. Some are chaos. Some days, everything goes according to plan and it's amazing, but others don't, and a lot of the people giving productivity advice act like you have unlimited time with predictable energy and long stretches of uninterrupted focus, in other words, a life that's not real, a life that most people don't have, a life without real constraints. [12:58.6]
To be clear, I tried a lot of that stuff. I'm not someone who's just going to dismiss it. I'm going to try it and see if it works for me. I tried to make it work anyway. I tried to be open-minded. I read the productivity advice that I thought would be okay, and I experimented with morning routines and weekly planning sessions, and all of that. Some of it helped. Just telling you, some of it really was awesome, but most of it wasn't awesome at all, not necessarily because the advice was wrong, but because it was built for a different reality.
The turning point came when I realized something uncomfortable. Most productivity advice is designed to make you feel disciplined, not necessarily to make you effective. That's why productivity advice rewards complexity and what I'll call “optimization theater.” Who cares about optimization if you're broke? Who cares if you feel disciplined but you're unhealthy? It does not matter. I would rather be less optimized with more money and a happier, healthier life. Who literally cares about optimization instead of all the other things? If the goal is to have more clients, wouldn't you rather have more clients with less optimization than being super-hyper-optimized and still have a business that’s struggling? [14:12.8]
So, that's when I stopped asking stuff like, “How can I do more?” and I started asking a very different question, which was “What can I stop deciding?” We're going to go back to the deciding part. That question changed everything for me, because a lot of people mistakenly believe that productivity problems are execution problems, and they're not. They're really decision problems, because you're deciding what to work on, deciding what matters to you in your life and your business. You're deciding whether something is good enough to meet your standards, and so on. They're all decisions.
Every decision drains your energy, and every reopened decision, back when I talked about financial advisors who asked, “Should I niche down? Should I advertise here or there?” all those questions, they drain momentum. That's why you need to build systems that assume you have a busy life. Not just systems for the sake of having systems, you want antifragile systems. When you do that, your output from the same level of input, which is literally your productivity, should go up. [15:12.0]
That is the part that people struggle with, because productivity for very busy people, like parents, it's all about reducing the friction, not increasing your effort. Sure, you can always increase your effort. If you want to do that, that's an option available to you, but you don't have to.
One more time, I am literally doing this. I am practicing what I preach. That is why I'm so confident in telling you this right now, because if your productivity system only works when you're well-rested, when nothing goes wrong, when you have uninterrupted time, when you feel super motivated, then it was never a real system. Real productivity works under interruption. Real businesses operate under pressure. Real systems assume that life will get in the way. That's the productivity secret of busy people and busy parents. [15:56.7]
So, to end this podcast episode, I'll say one more thing. I have noticed that financial advisors tend to fall into two camps. I've been running the Inner Circle for eight years now, and even though cancellations are rare, I have a 1.86% annualized churn rate, which means, I mean, super awesome, lower than Netflix and Audible and Amazon Prime, and all those big services. Super amazing. I love that.
One of the more common reasons people leave is because they're either expecting to have or they have recently had children, and in my mind, it's one of the dumbest things ever, because that's precisely the moment when you should put your foot on the gas and get serious about building real systems. So, advisors either, a) buckle down and increase their productivity, which is what I think you should do, or b) make things significantly worse. They usually don't know that they're making things worse, but I do, because I've seen it again and again and again, but, hey, they don't listen. They think they're special. They think they're different. [16:55.0]
The advisors who make things worse are the ones who say they'll, quote-unquote, “pause” their marketing for a little bit. They'll, quote-unquote, “slow down.” They'll tell themselves that they'll continue building their businesses when things settle down. But what they don't realize is that ain't gon’ happen. Life does not return to a quieter baseline. It just changes form.
By the time they reengage, if ever—I'm not saying they come back to the Inner Circle because I blacklist people. I don't let them back in. But by the time they reengage with their marketing and their business—everything feels heavier and harder. They have less predictable revenue. They have less confidence. They have more pressure packed into fewer hours, because their life changed for them. At that point, if they're in clown world like some people are, the children become the scapegoat, and that is so sad. I hate when they do that. Like I said, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. But the real problem was the decision to step away from structure at the exact moment it was needed most. [17:53.8]
Here's why this split happens. This divide here between Camp A and Camp B has nothing to do with work ethic and everything to do with how financial advisors interpret constraint. The people in Camp A, the ones who buckle down and get serious, they see that constraint as a signal to get serious, to professionalize, to build systems, and Camp B sees constraint as a reason to downshift.
So, one group, A, tightens the system, B loosens it, and the outcomes are entirely predictable. What's frustrating is that Camp B often believes they're being responsible. They tell themselves that they're prioritizing their family, but what they're really doing is postponing the work that would reduce long-term stress for everyone involved. So, a fragile business is not family friendly. A business that only works when everything goes right is a liability once other people depend on you. You are screwing your whole family if you believe that you could just stop or walk away, or whatever. [18:52.7]
So, if having a child makes your business harder to run, that is information that you should use to better your life. It is telling you that your business was never designed for the real world. That is why I get so animated about this topic. I don't see all of this as a reason to slow down. I see it as forcing proper function. It's a moment when you either build real systems or you pay the price for not having them. That is it. There is no neutral option. That's the fork in the road that most advisors don't even realize they have passed or they're coming up to, or whatever.
Obviously, this episode is not just for parents, because the principles can be applied no matter where you are in life, but if you know a financial advisor who is either expecting a child or who already has a growing family, please share this episode with him or her. It is legitimately some of the most valuable advice I can share with that specific audience.
Thank you so much. It means the world to me that you're listening to this, and I will catch you next week. [19:50.3]
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