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You’ve run the drill before: the deserted island. Which movies, people, business practices and booze/chocolate treats would you bring with you? It’s a mental exercise to help you whittle down to what is your favorite, necessary or most-addicted-to commodity. The scenario is standard with guidance counselors and social workers – repeated to the point of cliché.
When we are quarantined and socially-distanced, it’s not an exercise anymore.
Most of us are working from home almost all the time, maybe leaving once a day for essential groceries. And essential is the key word; we are living and running our businesses in only the essential ways. Conferences and networking events are canceled, in-person meetings are done through the awkward medium of video conferencing or not at all.
We are on a deserted island, and the most necessary, most important parts of our firm’s life have become apparent. Instead of screaming and cussing, which never does you much good on a remote archipelago, what can we learn? What wisdom will we bring back from the experience of evaluating our financial planning practice?
Make a list of essentials
We are lucky to have some continuity of service. We’re not working at a school, small business or restaurant that closed. When you look over the quarantine days, which will hopefully be in our rearview mirror quickly, where did you spend the most energy and what paid off the best?
Make a list. That’s how my mind works, and it helps do this with the two old-fashioned columns: “Important (desert island)” and “Not Important (left on the ship).” You may be surprised to find out what lands in these two columns.
Desert island essentials
The important items, your left column, will be those tasks and relationships that were first on your mind and took up the most time/energy, but have the highest ROI. You may find that you got the most out of a daily team meeting over video conference or that your clients were grateful to have a brief touchpoint with you on the phone.
You may find that you revisited your mission statement when the pressure was on, reminding yourself why you’re in the work and how you best serve. You also might get a lot of out of the relative solitude – writing, research and continuing education you thought you didn’t have time for in the past.
Non-essentials left on the ship
On the right-hand column – the items you left to sink on the ship – you put things you can do without. This can be even more revealing: What did you not miss?
For me it was travel. Sure, it’s best to do the in-person handshake when you can, but what if we don’t always have the luxury? Can the time you have with clients be three-dimensional and productive enough if you meet less often or meet electronically?
You might find somewhere you could make your operations leaner and more streamlined or a processes that could be tightened up. Now is the time that you’ll see it. The quarantine and social-distancing will “centrifuge” your process to separate the essential from the secondary.
The new normal
How will your story have changed? What will be different about your expectations of your firm, your clients and the markets? When we return from the deserted island, with some new perspectives on our work and our workplace, the challenge will then be to communicate them to your team and implement them.
This deserted island experience is a time to gain clarity and reinvest after evaluating your financial planning practice. Knowing what’s most important in your work is a rare gift, one that would be lost if we don’t learn from the experience. With this clarity, realign yourself and your practice with your values and leave the deadweight behind.
Jud Mackrill is the chief marketing officer for Carson Group. He is passionate about building digital strategies and powerful tools to enhance the lives of advisors to effectively grow their firms.
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Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
