I don’t want to finish the year strong!

I hate the hustle culture.

Maybe it’s because of the pandemic, maybe it’s because I’m now 40, or maybe it’s because I’m tired from having two kids under two.

But I don’t want to hustle as that leads to a business where I am limping until the end of the year, where I am exhausted from constantly being reactive; where I am just counting down the days until the break.

If you can relate, here are five things you can do to glide into the new year and ensure 2023 flows with ease.

1. Plan your money-making events

Being strategic with your marketing and having a plan for what you are going to focus on for the year will let you have a consistent lead flow. It will also give you focus and stop you from getting distracted by bright, shiny things.

Your money-making activities could look like this:

?Joint events with referral partnerships

?You speaking on other people’s podcasts

?Writing for publications

?Your own events (In financial planning, I held Money Masterclasses four times a year)

2. Plan your downtime

Your rest ethic is as important as your work ethic. Just like an athlete has an off-season and rest days, you too need to schedule in your downtime if you want to perform at your best.

Chances are if it’s not in your diary, it’s very easy to forget until you are usually past exhausted and headed for burnout.

When putting your downtime in your calendar, think about how many days a week you want to work; e.g., maybe you want Fridays off, or maybe you only want one night a week if you have late appointments.

Then look at it from a monthly perspective — maybe you want a long weekend every second month.

Next, think about every quarter — maybe you want part of the school holidays off or you want to escape winter.

Having these on the calendar also gives us things to look forward to.

3. Plan your client deliverables

Thanks to the administratively clunky fee disclosure requirements in financial planning, clients are reminded of fees many times.

Many advisers also have a business model where clients pay monthly fees, so just having one meeting a year will no longer cut it.

You need to be scheduling your client deliverables for the year so they are getting value between review meetings. Also, I don’t think more meetings are necessarily more valuable for clients because like hitting the same note on the piano, it gets a bit boring.

So having variety in your deliverables is important for keeping clients engaged and you can use scale and automation so this doesn’t become more work for you. Examples:

• Email/text message nurture sequence – Where you work hard once, build the check-in sequence and then you can use it for all your clients.
• Wealth master classes – Why not hold these online and then store them in your client portal as a valuable resource for clients to refer back to?
• Private podcast channel for clients– Think about how your clients consume information. If they travel or commute for work, then a private podcast could be the way to go over say a newsletter. Hearing your voice is also very intimate and helps maintain connection and trust.

Make sure these are in your calendar and communicated with your team so they can help make those happen.

4. Plan your professional/business development

Because of the changing pace of the advice landscape, it’s important that we allow time for professional and business development. Things like:

• PD days – a chance to keep on top of the compliance stuff and connect with other advisers
• Conferences - like the IFA Innovation Summit 2023 which give us new ideas and gets us out of the day-to-day grind of business
• Team huddle – we have a Monday team huddle to get the team set up and clear about expectations for the week
• Team training – if we want to attract and retain talent, we need to be investing in their development
• Business planning days – where you can reflect and reset to ensure you are continually improving your business

5. Plan your personal development

Something I’ve worked on this year is scheduling time for personal development and for things that bring me joy outside of work.

This helps me feel more balanced and gives me renewed energy for my family and work.

For me this year, it was Pilates three times a week and I joined a book club (I think you have reached peaked middle age when a book club is the highlight of your social calendar.)

Next year, I’m looking at completing a course in creative writing and I would love to climb Mount Kosciusko.

So think about from a personal point of view what you would like to make time for — triathlon, parkrun, soccer, or something you want to learn just for fun.