New Advisor Productivity

• To attain knowledge, add something every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day. ~ Lao Tzu
• Simplify, then gradually add details until you have a good enough resolution to make a decision ~ Hasard Lee, The Art of Clear Thinking
• To get unstuck is to simplify. Strip away the complexity, and you carve a straighter path from beginning to end ~ Adam Alter, Anatomy of a Breakthrough
• Delete, Delete, Delete. If you don’t add back at least 10%, you didn’t delete enough ~ Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no more simple ~ Charlie Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack
• People are tempted to tell you everything when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more ~ Chip and Dan Heath, Made to Stick
• Complexity is favored for its excitement, when simplicity may do a better job ~ Morgan Housel, Same as Ever
• Perfection is finally obtained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there’s no longer anything to take away ~ Rick Rubin, The Creative Act, A Way of Being
• Music is the space between the notes ~ Claude Debussy, French Composer

I was reading the book Subtract by Leidy Klotz a while back and found that, while it had a ton of great content and learnings, it was really a great summary of other powerful books by really smart people that touched on many of the same points. The bullets above should make my point.

In an effort to apply this wisdom, I pared down a sample PX plan to what I believe is a very effective 7-page (including cover page) plan for a young individual or couple, and the last 3 pages are really optional. I’ve been using this with newer advisor groups, and they have found it easy to grasp and understand, which makes their fact-finding and language learnings more impactful and, in turn, Life and DI closing more successful!

When new advisors come out of NTP and feel like they’ve been drinking from a firehose (not a negative of NTP!), helping them simplify allows them to gain immediate confidence in their knowledge and have a base they can build from. As they have success and prospect into more complex markets, it’s much easier to then layer on additional knowledge, skills, and language…and yes, PX pages…to further their capabilities.

In an effort to take my own advice with this message, instead of going into more narrative detail, attached below is the sample PX, the email I sent you all in April that goes deeper on the brief annotations in the sample PX, and my notes from the book Subtract.

Open the Key PX Pages (FPP Tools)

Read the April email: Driving FPP #6 · Heuristics: Anchoring and Loss Aversion

Read my notes on Subtract (FPP Library)

If your new rep productivity and retention isn’t where you want it to be or where it can be, I will partner with your local development team and make a real impact! Let’s have a brief conversation, I promise you’ll find it beneficial.

Think Differently,

Steve