*found on EZine Articles
by: Valerie Love
A financial advisor career has multiple benefits, including good pay, great client relationships and learning galore. It's an opportunity to engage in a highly respected field, and to provide a valuable service to clients who rely on your expertise.
I enjoyed being in the financial planning industry for several years and was privileged to serve over 200 clients in my financial planning practice.
Here are 4 tips if you're planning to become a financial advisor that will get you started on the right foot:
1. Hire help immediately. This is one of the best decisions I ever made in my financial advisor carer. I immediately hired a college student to do paperwork and make phone calls. She was a lifesaver. With all the new responsibilities of being a financial advisor, this investment was well worth it for me.
2. Have a paper management system, and stick with it! Determine early on a paper management system that will work for you to keep all your important papers and documents in order. The financial services industry is heavy on paper, and it's easy to get bogged down in a white mass of papers on your desk (and all over your office) if you're not equipped with a way to handle all the paper that comes at you on a daily basis.
3. Set office hours and stick with them! Right up front, set your office hours. The beginning years of building a financial planning practice often mean long hours. There's no doubt you'll work very hard in the beginning, but you've got to give yourself time to rejuvenate and time for the other things in life that are important to you.
4. Determine early on who your ideal client is, then go to all the places they hang out. Become a speaker to those organizations. Frequent the places where your ideal clients can be found. This puts you in direct contact with potential clients without you spending a boatload of money on marketing.
A financial advisor career can be a rewarding one. Enjoy your new venture.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Charging Up Your Personal Productivity
*found on EZine Artlicles
by: HS Tan
Have you ever wondered that there are so many things to do but yet so little time to use? Have you always been busy at work? Have you always been saying, "I'm busy", "not now..." or "I do not have enough time!" At the end of the day, you feel there is no sense of achievement from a long day at work and you have no clue about it. Have you always envy the performance and time management of your co-workers? (Or you simply don't care). Do you want to power up your personal productivity and improve your time management like your co-workers?
We're going to introduce you a power concept that will make you efficient and productive at work. It's called the 24-hour pay check. It's the base principle in getting self-disciplined for time management (good time management requires self-disciplined). Everyday, you are given a pay check of 24-hours. No more, no less. However, this "free" pay check can only be utilized in a day. Like a one-day voucher at the shopping mall. You cannot ask for more (time) in the check nor can you deposit and reuse it for another day. You have to use it in that day only.
In a normal weekday, you spend 7 hours sleeping. 3 hours traveling to and from the office. You work average a day of 8 ½ hours with lunch breaks included. Now how much time do we have left? That's an estimated 5 ½ hours left in the pay check. With the remaining 5 ½ hours left, you need to have breakfast, buy groceries, shower, dinner and washing the dishes. Say that takes another 3 hours. You've got 2 ½ hours left. These 2 ½ hours will be your only leisure and self-improvement time. Not forgetting if you have kids, part of the remaining hours will be used attending to their needs... And all this CANNOT be brought forward to the next day!
Now you can see that time is a precious commodity and we should treasure every expense of it. Using this powerful concept, we can identify what are the time wasters and what are the things to do to be productive. The time spent at the workplace is an average of 8 ½ hours. 1 hour is used for lunch break. ½ hour is used for tea break. Another ½ hours maybe spent at the water cooler on gossips and rumors. Back at your desk, you enter into procrastination mode for another ½ hours in and out throughout the day. You received an average 6 phone calls of 5 minutes interval every day and this sums up to another ½ hour being used.
How much time is left from the 8 ½ hours? We've left with 5 ½ hours... yes, we're not finished yet. You have to handle fire-fighting tasks such as co-workers' enquiries/requests and attend to emails. That will be another 1 ½ hours. You spent time chatting on the instant messenger for another 1 hour throughout the day. This includes time to respond to your buddy and time wasted flipping your tasks and the instant messenger. Finally, with all the things going on in the workplace, you give yourself another ½ hour of personal breaks throughout the day. Let's not also forget that there are people who spend time reading newspaper or looking at stock prices at work...
Now how much time do we have left? Only 3 hours is left for you to do actual productive work. Can you see how much time is really effective used if you were operating daily like this? If you can optimize the time, wouldn't you be able to achieve more things in a day? Now re-look your daily schedule in the workplace. Does it resemble anything like that? If it does, our advice is you need to rethink of the important things in life (and office) for yourself. Of course, "important things" can mean differently with people. But if you stumbled upon here seeking for time management solution, you will know deep in your heart the definition of "important things".
by: HS Tan
Have you ever wondered that there are so many things to do but yet so little time to use? Have you always been busy at work? Have you always been saying, "I'm busy", "not now..." or "I do not have enough time!" At the end of the day, you feel there is no sense of achievement from a long day at work and you have no clue about it. Have you always envy the performance and time management of your co-workers? (Or you simply don't care). Do you want to power up your personal productivity and improve your time management like your co-workers?
We're going to introduce you a power concept that will make you efficient and productive at work. It's called the 24-hour pay check. It's the base principle in getting self-disciplined for time management (good time management requires self-disciplined). Everyday, you are given a pay check of 24-hours. No more, no less. However, this "free" pay check can only be utilized in a day. Like a one-day voucher at the shopping mall. You cannot ask for more (time) in the check nor can you deposit and reuse it for another day. You have to use it in that day only.
In a normal weekday, you spend 7 hours sleeping. 3 hours traveling to and from the office. You work average a day of 8 ½ hours with lunch breaks included. Now how much time do we have left? That's an estimated 5 ½ hours left in the pay check. With the remaining 5 ½ hours left, you need to have breakfast, buy groceries, shower, dinner and washing the dishes. Say that takes another 3 hours. You've got 2 ½ hours left. These 2 ½ hours will be your only leisure and self-improvement time. Not forgetting if you have kids, part of the remaining hours will be used attending to their needs... And all this CANNOT be brought forward to the next day!
Now you can see that time is a precious commodity and we should treasure every expense of it. Using this powerful concept, we can identify what are the time wasters and what are the things to do to be productive. The time spent at the workplace is an average of 8 ½ hours. 1 hour is used for lunch break. ½ hour is used for tea break. Another ½ hours maybe spent at the water cooler on gossips and rumors. Back at your desk, you enter into procrastination mode for another ½ hours in and out throughout the day. You received an average 6 phone calls of 5 minutes interval every day and this sums up to another ½ hour being used.
How much time is left from the 8 ½ hours? We've left with 5 ½ hours... yes, we're not finished yet. You have to handle fire-fighting tasks such as co-workers' enquiries/requests and attend to emails. That will be another 1 ½ hours. You spent time chatting on the instant messenger for another 1 hour throughout the day. This includes time to respond to your buddy and time wasted flipping your tasks and the instant messenger. Finally, with all the things going on in the workplace, you give yourself another ½ hour of personal breaks throughout the day. Let's not also forget that there are people who spend time reading newspaper or looking at stock prices at work...
Now how much time do we have left? Only 3 hours is left for you to do actual productive work. Can you see how much time is really effective used if you were operating daily like this? If you can optimize the time, wouldn't you be able to achieve more things in a day? Now re-look your daily schedule in the workplace. Does it resemble anything like that? If it does, our advice is you need to rethink of the important things in life (and office) for yourself. Of course, "important things" can mean differently with people. But if you stumbled upon here seeking for time management solution, you will know deep in your heart the definition of "important things".
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