Most consultants start their career being very energized and excited about what the career stands to give them. Over the years you start seeing associates and consultants feeling exhausted, drained and de-energized, but they’re not alone.

As an advisor continues to get more and more clients, and perhaps is doing recruitment and is expanding his team, his parents are also aging. And as we get older, our stamina goes down. We have to exercise as well, and, at the same time, we have to juggle a fulfilling and happy marriage. Everybody wants a happy marriage, but as responsibilities power up and time becomes less and less available, our associates start experiencing burnout, and that’s why they feel exhausted.

What if we had a superpower to have 72 hours every day? My superpower is delegation. Delegation has changed the lives of my associates and myself. If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.

Lisa is a business development manager. As I speak in Vancouver, she is spreading my brand. She is promoting my brand to individuals to raise my brand and awareness of me in the marketplace.

Megan is a client support manager. With her, even with the time difference in Vancouver and Singapore, my clients still get their inquiries settled, their requests met, and I can still be a world-class advisor by giving them a world-class experience.

Olivia focuses on associate development. She ensures that associates continue to grow professionally and personally as I’m here speaking, but training programs continue to be run in the office.

This is the key question: Do we delegate tasks when our business expands, or does our business expand when we delegate tasks? Sometimes, for us to achieve the outcome that we want, we first have to take action. You do not always sing when you are happy, but whenever you sing, you are happy, so it’s the same for delegation. If you have a support system to delegate your task to as an entrepreneur, you will be able to outsource ideas at the speed of thought. With that, the availability of support should get your creativity flowing like never before.

There are so many things that take up our precious time that we can delegate: tax management, budgeting, marketing, branding. When someone asks me, “How do I edit the videos,” I say, “I have no idea how to edit.”

I have two chats for every single business manager that I have. One is an urgent chat; one is a non-urgent chat. For my urgent chat groups, anything that’s an emergency and anything that I have to do right now, I forward to my group chat immediately — claim purposes and anything that associate requires. But for the non-urgent chats, it is a treasury and a storage for all the ideas that I’ve learned from every single training session that I’ve gone to. I make sure that my business support system keeps me accountable to get these ideas to fruition.

Because of this support system, because of delegation, our clients will see our associates no longer as individuals but as an entity. When they see our associates as an entity, it builds trust, it builds sustainable business, and it builds repeated business consistently. When my clients go to my website, they see that it’s not just me who is supporting them but an entire group of individuals who are committed to their financial success.

When I wanted to systemize my Top of the Table qualification year after year, I realized that I had to do something I hated the most, which is strategizing. I hate sitting down and thinking of strategies. My business support system came in to do it for me. They created the following three pillars of advisory sustainability for my business to be able to do well year after year.

1. Be professional service partners

Instead of our being individuals, we have to be the network for our clients to link them up to any other thing indirectly or directly related to financial planning. When my clients asked me about mortgage refinancing, I had the network to help them get that done. When my clients asked me to talk about income tax planning, they relied on me. When they think about estate planning and will writing, they look for me as well. This is one of the key systems that has been created by my superpower of delegation, and these are some examples of inquiries that I constantly get because my clients see me as more than just a financial advisor; they see me as their financial network.

2. Personalized touch points

This includes a biweekly newsletter created by Megan to place ourselves top of mind of our prospective clients. Many of our consultants, after having 200 or 300 clients, start losing that personal touch and relationship with their clients. With the help of my system, we created a biweekly newsletter to put our brand, our value and our beliefs top of mind for our clients. This way, whenever they think of something, they think of us every two weeks, which means that in a year, they’ll think of us at least 26 times. Can you imagine thinking of someone 26 times in a year? Whenever you think of something financial planning–related, you will definitely approach this advisor.

3. Experiential events

With the help of my support system, we created organized monthly client engagement events to engage our top clients with high profitability and high affinity. Because of this, we are able to build a sustainable business thanks to these systems.

With delegation as my superpower, I can do everything, and our consultants can have this superpower as well. The strength of the team is each individual member, but the strength of each member is the team. If you have your own system, but your consultants don’t have it, it will not build a sustainable practice for the entire company.

For example, Jennie has been procrastinating on building her social media presence for herself for years. I’ve been hearing her speak about how she would like to brand herself, but she was doing everything by herself.

With delegation she started her own woman-empowerment podcast, and with that she went from an unconfident woman who was worried about her career switch to a two-time MDRT qualifier in two years. Most importantly, she had increased time, productivity and happiness. My happiest moments with her are when I realize that she’s able to go for a holiday with her husband without thinking about what will happen to my business.

Ian is a student advisor. He was a 23-, 24-year-old in university trying to be a financial advisor, a successful one, while juggling full-time studies. With him we created a system where he was able to write a guidebook on investing. With that he went from full-time university student who has a limited prospect network to MDRT advisor in nine months while still in the top university in Singapore. My associates now have this superpower to have increased time, productivity and happiness.

The next time we see an exhausted associate who is not doing the things he is supposed to do, I hope we remember this: Inaction shows symptoms of a problem that has not been solved. Solve this problem with delegation.

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