A resolution for a new decade of growth

Have you set your business goals for 2020?

Try doing this.

If you want meaningful business growth, try identifying what you should stop doing before making a list of the things you want to accomplish.

My business partner of nearly 30 years likes to say, “What got us here will not get us to where we want to be, or we’d be there already.”

It’s a constant reminder that we can’t rely on our previous methods or successes.

When we launched our RIA in 1993, we had a handful of clients, about $10 million under our care and one employee. Today, we have over 11,000 clients, 17 locations, $8 billion under management and well over 200 employees.

For our organization to grow, I’ve had to jettison activities while simultaneously adding new skills and embracing new responsibilities.

That’s because I’ve found that one of the best ways to grow is to get rid of those activities that are not productive so that my time is spent on the things that directly lead to growth.

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Here’s something I encourage you to do every year: First, make a list of each activity you complete on a weekly, monthly and annual basis. Write down everything you do repeatedly.

Next, identify the activities that are the most productive (i.e. lucrative or growth-focused) for your practice. For example, if you build your practice by developing relationships with centers of influence, list that as a “highly productive” activity. Conversely, if you purchase office supplies and open mail, list those as “unproductive activities.”

Next, once you’ve listed all your activities, and you’ve arranged them according to their potential to create the most revenue and growth, go through the list and rank the activities on a scale of 1 to 5, taking into consideration both how much you enjoy doing them and whether you are any good at them.

Be brutally self-aware.

For example, labeling at task a “1” means you neither enjoy doing that activity, nor are you any good at it. A “5” is an activity that you are both highly competent at and you thoroughly enjoy doing.

Lastly, rank all the activities, with the ones at the top being those which lead to growth and which you most enjoy doing, and the activities near the bottom being those you dislike doing and which don’t lead to growth.

Surely, as a principal, there will always be some things that fall in the middle of your list, which you either dislike doing but must continue to do, or love doing but which really don’t serve you or your business.

Now, imagine spending 2020 doing the things that you love and that grow your practice, say 80% of the time, while delegating the rest?

Simple as it may seem, I’m betting that if you complete this exercise, not only will 2020 will be a good year for you professionally, but you’ll be setting yourself up for faster growth in 2021 and beyond.

​[More: When your growth stalls]

Scott Hanson is co-founder of Allworth Financial, formerly Hanson McClain Advisors, a fee-based RIA with $4.5 billion in AUM.