How Do Financial Advisors Manage Stress?

Being a financial advisor is a stressful job. You’re not alone if you’re feeling a little rundown and burnt out. In fact, you’re in the majority. 71% of financial advisors report feeling moderate to high levels of stress, according to a study by the Financial Planning Association.

Consolidated Planning is a comprehensive planning firm with over 100 financial advisors in the southeast. We’ve built advisor resources to support our advisors in ways that reduce stress and make their job more enjoyable.

Over 40 years we’ve gained a lot of insight and experience with stress management. We’ve compiled the top 6 tips to stress management that we’ve found our advisors to have success with. Use this list to help keep your stress levels under control so you can focus on what matters most.

What Causes Stress For Financial Advisors?

Before we dive into the tips to help you reduce and manage stress as a financial advisor, let’s explore what causes stress for financial advisors. We’ve found that financial advisors face potential pressure from a number of sources, including:

• The challenges of growing a client base
• Market fluctuations
• Managing client expectations
• Achieving personal income and professional goals
• Compliance and regulatory oversight

 

6 Tips For Financial Advisors To Reduce Stress

Reducing stress in your career as a financial advisor is possible. You just have to be proactive in your approach.

 

Tip #1: Keep A Full Calendar

Consolidated Planning considers a calendar to be full when you have 30 future appointments set.

These appointments will help you detach yourself from the outcome of any particular meeting because you know there are 29 more if the results don’t go the way you want. Importantly, a full calendar removes desperation from the equation and prevents the dreaded “commission breath,” if you will.

 

Tip #2: Follow A Model Work Week

A model work week is just that – a model. A best case scenario for how your week should look. We know how easy it is to think you don’t need a schedule as a financial advisor but scheduling your work-week can help keep you on track and ensure that nothing and no-one slips through the cracks. Ask yourself: what would be ideal for my work-week?

A model work week typically consists of two buffer days and three focus days.

Mondays and Fridays

• Admin (client notes, research, meeting preparation, data collection)
• Trainings (CPU, Continuing Education)
• Consolidated Planning Meetings
• Reviewing prospecting lists

Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays

• Client meetings
• Client phone calls
• Anything where you’re in front of people

During your buffer days, your goal should be 15 meetings. These 15 meetings will be broken down as follows:

• 4 new client philosophy meetings
• 4 – 6 existing client planning meetings
• 2 center of influence meetings
• 3 target market meetings

Here, you own your practice and we want to help you hold yourself accountable to your goals. A model work week helps you do just that.

 

Tip #3: Talk To An Experienced Advisor

All new advisors at Consolidated Planning are assigned a mentor. This mentor’s primary role is to help you keep your mental game strong. The ups and downs of this career will drown you if you let them. Talking to someone who’s walked in your shoes does wonders to reset your spirit.

 

Tip #4: Outsource Non-Revenue Generating Tasks

If you’re feeling bogged down and overwhelmed by mountains of paperwork and pesky administrative tasks, then you need to outsource those tasks. Paperwork and administration are necessary evils that come with the career, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the one doing the work. 

Outsourcing these non-revenue producing activities gives you more time to do the part of the job that you love and puts money in your pocket.

Now, we know outsourcing these activities isn’t always possible, especially as you’re building a career. Here at Consolidated Planning, we offer a few services to our advisors to help alleviate some of these tasks as it relates to case support, paperwork, and crafted marketing prompts.

 

Tip #5: Don’t Get Emotionally Invested In Client Outcomes

This is usually easier said than done. As humans, it’s only natural to want your clients to follow all of your recommendations to the letter, but that’s not reality. 

Your job as a financial advisor is to present the right options to your client, educate them thoroughly, and advocate for their best interest. Ultimately though, the decisions are theirs to make. When a client chooses not to follow your recommendations, pick yourself up and move on. 

Afterall, you should have other irons in the fire.

 

Tip #6: Stack Positives

Have you ever had a day where one thing after the other seems to go wrong? Of course you have. By the end of the day, your negative attitude is all consuming and you’re just waiting for the next shoe to drop.

But why?

We naturally stack the negatives in our life and allow them to compound. It’s in our nature unless we do something to disrupt the cycle. At Consolidated Planning, we disrupt the cycle in our monthly goal planning meetings by taking the time to intentionally stack the positives in our life and looking for ways to expand upon that success.

 

Find Ways To Manage Stress In Your Career

How you manage (or don’t manage) your stress as a financial advisor is likely the same way you manage stress in other areas of your life. This can be a stressful career if you don’t take the time to protect against it and set yourself up for success.

This means putting in the extra work up front – finding ways and processes to eliminate those stressors to create space to focus on your clients. The right firm for you can help with this.

If you think the stress is worth the potential success as a financial advisor, talk with a team member on what your first year at Consolidated Planning will look like.

 

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Exp. 10/2027

Consolidated Planning, Inc. is an Agency of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. Securities products and advisory services offered through Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS), member FINRA, SIPC. OSJ: 6115 Park South Drive, Suite 200, Charlotte NC 28210, Phone # 704-5528507. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. This firm is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS. This material is intended for general use. By providing this content Park Avenue Securities LLC and your financial representative are not undertaking to provide investment advice or make a recommendation for a specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity.