[[:encoded, "Peter Lantos is the editor of The Elite Advisor website and conducted an interview with Anne Bachrach, The Accountability Coach. One-on-One … an audiocast series to help you build your practice and take your business to the next level with ideas and strategies from several top experts and coaches in the financial services industry.\n\nHere are some of the questions he asked during this one-on-one interview with Anne Bachrach, The Accountability Coach.\n\n1) What is Accountability Coaching all about and how can a Financial Advisor benefit from it?\n2) You state that your typical clients report an increase of at least 20% revenue yearly, in addition to working fewer hours and having more balance in their lives. How do you help the Advisor achieve this?\n3) What are the secrets you teach to Advisors that help them Easily and Quickly Attract More Ideal Clients?\n4) A lot of the advisors you have coached have had some tremendous success. Can you give us 2 or 3 examples of what they did and what their results were?\n5) You co-authored your first book, The Roadmap to Success, with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, 2 giants in the business. This book features 15 of America's top intellectual minds mapping out successful business strategies. How can this book help a Financial Advisor?\n6) In your new book, Excuses Don’t Count – Results Rule, you reveal the truth about how Advisors can achieve their goals in the timeframe they have set. Can you reveal some of these truths for us?\n7) What is some of the best advice that money can buy?\n\nEnjoy the 20 minute interview."]]
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I’m the author of many books, including, Excuses Don’t Count; Results Rule, Live Life with No Regrets, No Excuses, The Guide to Stopping Procrastination, The Power of Visualization, My Gratitude Journal, the Work Life Balance Emergency Kit, and The Roadmap To Success with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, and more.
Aim for what you want each and every day!
Anne Bachrach
The Accountability Coach™
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(upbeat music) - Welcome to one-on-one, an audio cast series to help you build your practice and take your business to the next level with ideas and strategies from several top experts and coaches in the financial services industry. Hello, my name is Peter Lantos and I'm the editor of the Elite Advisor website. I will be your host for this one-on-one interview with Ann Backrack, one of the world-class coaches featured on the Elite Advisor website. Who is Ann Backrack? Ann is the president of AM Enterprises in San Diego, California. She has 23 years of experience training and coaching financial advisors. The objective is to do more in less time through maximizing the advisor's true potential and ultimately leading them to an even better quality of life. Reach your true potential and have a truly balanced life is what she strives to help all of her clients achieve. The core of Ann's methodology is accountability. Hence her nickname, the Accountability Pitbull. She inspires her clients to stay focused and take action on the highest payoff activities that lead to their ultimate professional and personal success. By utilizing her powerful processes, Ann's clients learn how to maximize their true potential and bring balance to their lives. Ann, welcome to one-on-one. Well, thank you, Peter. It's really a pleasure to be here. Ann, what is accountability coaching all about and how can a financial advisor benefit from it? Well, Peter, let me start off first by saying it's a great time to be a financial advisor. You know, I was reading the March 2009 Women's Health magazine and they say that one of the hottest jobs right now is a financial advisor. And do in part really to the struggling economy, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics considers personal financial planning one of the top 10 fastest growing careers. A whole segment of our population is and will be relying on financial advisors, even most notably retired baby boomers or the generation wires who really have the most wealth. You know, these people, well, because you're listeners already possessed the knowledge and experience, they are in a great position to acquire clients that fit their ideal client profile. It's a great time to be a financial advisor. Now, getting to accountability coaching, well, in a nutshell, Peter, it's really helping the financial advisor to focus on their highest payoff activities that will put them in the highest probability position to achieve their goals within the time frames that they have set. When an advisor is accountable to someone, it obviously increases the probability that they will do what they need to do in order to achieve their goals. So the benefit is them achieving their goals so they can truly enjoy what's important to them in life. - And you state that your typical clients report an increase of at least 20% revenue each year. In addition to working fewer hours and having more balance in their lives, how do you help the advisor achieve this? - The advisors utilize a specific proven process that I've created for setting up and tracking their goals. They use effective time management. They focus on, again, their highest payoff activities. They have belief in themselves and the process. And I think also importantly is the desire and, of course, the accountability. So my involvement in their life is an investment that they should make a lot more money than they pay me, obviously, for my services. So advisors have to be willing to do the work required and actually do the work required to achieve their goals both personally and professionally. - What are the secrets you teach to advisors that help them easily and quickly attract more ideal clients? - I don't know if there's any secrets anymore (laughs) I don't say anything around here, but I really believe in leveraging resources. For example, many advisors I find still interesting don't ask for referrals. And now is a great time to be doing that because many people are looking for someone to help them. They're looking for people to give them advice. They're looking for someone that they can trust who's competent. So leveraging your strategic alliances or centers of influence is really, really important. Talking to your ideal clients. Coming up with lists of like your dentist, your mortgage broker, your real estate agent, your optimologist, your doctor, people at church, people that you deal with maybe with your children, ask all these people for referrals. And even if they don't fit your ideal client profile, they still can become referrals and they still can refer ideal people to you. So make a list of everybody that you know and talk to them about what you do, have them experience what you do and ask them for referrals. They might even become clients if they're not already. You probably get into this business originally because you care about making a difference and helping people. So go to the market with this attitude and wanting to be of service and with confidence. And you will attract ideal clients. - A lot of the advisors that you have coached have had some tremendous success. Can you give us two or three examples of what they did and what their results were? - Sure. Again, they followed a specific proven process, which means they had to set and track specific personal and business goals because I do believe that life is about balance. It's not just all one-sided work related. Although that's typically why most people begin working with me, it's because they wanna increase their revenue. But it's all about balance. So we create specific tracking mechanisms for personal and business goals. And the interesting thing is I think sometimes people sell themselves a little bit short. So I had a lady that exceeded, actually a couple of her goals, believe it or not. People that I coach sometimes are reluctant to set what I call stretch goals initially. When they don't know how they will achieve something that they really haven't tried before. So when we look at how they can achieve certain goals, they quickly realize that they could exceed those goals that they set. So for example, this particular lady had set a goal to, she had to go out and do a presentation for a group of people. And she first set her goal. I said, "What's your goal? What's your outcome? Why are you doing this?" And she told me, "Well, okay, this is why I'm doing it, and this is what I hope to get." And she said, "I'd like to get X number of appointments from this group." And I said, "Well, how many people are attending?" And she told me, and I said, "Well, wouldn't you want 100% of that if that were possible?" And she said, "Well, I mean, ideally, sure." So she reset her goal. She actually exceeded her goal and started getting referrals from these people just from one program. But a lot of times it just comes from, you know, changing your mindset. You know, again, talking about referrals, a lot of times it's uncomfortable for advisors, maybe even scary. I'm not sure exactly why, but it is when you sometimes talk to them about asking for referrals. So I had a gentleman who just really was reluctant to do this. When he finally sucked it up and he said, "Okay, I'm going to do this." He started asking for referrals. And you know what? It wasn't that bad. He realized, "What was I so afraid of?" He was getting all these positive responses back. People were glad to give him referrals. And he said, "What was I so afraid of? Why was I so reluctant?" So a lot of times we have those things that happen to us. And it's just kind of, you know, sucking it up and what this lady that I just mentioned earlier, what she said, "Yeah, you got to suck it up and put your big girl pants on." - Well, that's true. - Going just a lot. It's a good way to put it. - Yeah, exactly. - And you co-authored your first book, The Roadmap to Success with Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard, Two Giants in the Business. This book features 15 of America's top intellectual minds, mapping out successful business strategies. How can this book help a financial advisor? - Well, as you said, each of the 15 chapters contains great information from 15 different perspectives. An advisor, I would suggest, maybe review the chapters that they think would best help them on their journey to get from where they are now to where they wanna be, because we all are in a different place in life and in our business. So we each might need different things, you know, to help motivate us or inspire us to our next level. And of course, we all do have a next level. There's even a chapter in this book by my husband, Bill Backrack, that talks about how to implement the Success Roadmap. So another high trust client relationship building tool that could be a benefit to people. There's a chapter by a financial advisor, Mark Little, who is a very successful financial advisor and took his practice from, I believe it was about 360,000 to 1.6 million between the years of 1999 and 2002. Another tough time in the economy, not probably as tough as it is now, of course, but it was a tough time. He also talks about how he went from 313 pounds to 175 pounds. This book is Spentual Advisors, I think, at any level. In your new book, Excuses Don't Count Results Rule, you reveal the truth about how advisors can achieve their goals in the timeframe they have set. Can you talk about some of these truths for us? - Well, I think one of the first truths are you, like everybody else, only have 168 hours and a week. And we just were talking about that earlier. So no matter how old you are, no matter how much money you make, no matter how attractive you are, or how much information you can access on the internet or your Blackberry, you're still restricted to the same time constraint. There's no exceptions to this. So a person's quality of life is a function of how he or she really chooses to spend their time. So, you know, Peter, wouldn't it be great if our good intentions work the way we think that they should? You know, not even enthusiasm guarantees positive results. So there's always a gap, an often a gap, a wide gap between our intentions and our actions. Poor follow-through, really consciously deciding to do something, but then not doing it is a fact of life, unfortunately, for many of us. So we fail to take action necessary to be in alignment with our good intentions. And this can be very frustrating. Good intentions don't magically lead to good results either. They're a start, but unfortunately it's just not enough. That's just the truth. And that's where accountability really has an impact. And whether you use an accountability coach or, you know, some, a group of people to help hold you accountable, it really is an important aspect for all of us. I believe that what gets tracked, gets measured. And it's a really good idea to track and measure everything that you do if you don't already do this. And this really helps you focus on your highest payoff activities so you can achieve all of your goals. And we all benefit from some degree of accountability. You know, I'm not unlike everybody else because left to our own devices, we just don't do what we know we should do day after day. That's just the bottom line. What is some of the best advice that money can buy? Well, some people, I think, are determined to be successful. This year, even in spite of what's going on in the market, the economy, or the world. And while talking with the financial advisor the other day, he told me that 2008 was his best year ever. He was very obviously very proud and happy with such an accomplishment. And he told me that he's already started his 2009 year out already very successfully. Now, will it be easy to achieve what he even did last year? Probably not. But that isn't stopping him from doing whatever it takes to have another successful year. And trying to make this year even better than last. So I guess my question to our listeners is, you know, what about you? Are you resigned having this be a crappy year? Or are you resigned to really putting your head down, staying focused on what you can control? And will this be your best year ever? What do you have to do to get yourself refocused and inspired to do the work your goals require to achieve them? To capitalize on unprecedented opportunities, to be successful this year, in spite of what people say. You can do anything that you set your mind to achieving. Leverage the resources and get focused on the activity that you can control. And you will achieve your goals. And most likely you'll even be amazed at what you'll achieve. For some help, you can certainly use the free resources that are on my website at www.countabilitycoach.com. There's a number of free things that you can take advantage of right on my website that would be of benefit. Let me just leave you with one quote that I really like, Peter. Daniel Webster said, "There's always room at the top." That's great advice. Yep, I think we should join the people that are at the top. The rest of us should come along. That's right. Well, Anne, thank you very much for this one-on-one interview and giving us some perspective on the value of an accountability coach's role in the life of a financial advisor. I want to wish you the very best of success in continuing to make a difference in people's lives. Well, Peter, I appreciate you inviting me today. Thank you so much. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
[[:encoded, "Peter Lantos is the editor of The Elite Advisor website and conducted an interview with Anne Bachrach, The Accountability Coach. One-on-One … an audiocast series to help you build your practice and take your business to the next level with ideas and strategies from several top experts and coaches in the financial services industry.\n\nHere are some of the questions he asked during this one-on-one interview with Anne Bachrach, The Accountability Coach.\n\n1) What is Accountabili...
