Why Working Harder Is Not the Answer: How to Build Smarter Success

Most successful people do not need to work harder.

They are already working hard.

What they need is to become more disciplined about how they use their time, where they focus their energy and which activities genuinely move their business forward.

That is one of the biggest lessons I have learned during more than three decades in financial services and business.

Success is not simply about doing more.

Very often, it is about doing the right things better.

Do You Know What One Hour of Your Time Is Worth?

One exercise I regularly share with advisers, salespeople, and business owners is very simple.

Take the income or revenue you generated over the last 12 months.

Divide it by the number of days you actually worked.

Then divide that number by the number of productive hours you work each day.

The result gives you an approximate value for one hour of your time.

That number can be incredibly revealing.

Because once you understand what your time is worth, you start looking at your diary differently.

An unnecessary one-hour meeting costs you.

Procrastination has a cost.

Driving several hours to attend a meeting that could have been virtual has a cost.

Doing administration you could delegate has a cost.

And constantly allowing other people to take control of your diary has a cost too.

The objective is not to become obsessed with money.

It is to become more conscious that time is one of the most valuable resources you have.

Busy Does Not Mean Productive

I regularly meet people who proudly tell me that they work 10, 12 or even 14 hours a day.

But there is an important difference between being at work and actually working.

You can spend an entire day answering emails, attending meetings, completing administration and talking about the things you intend to do.

You can be incredibly busy.

But have you genuinely moved your business forward?

That is the question.

If you want to improve your results, there are essentially two ways of doing it.

You can work more hours.

Or you can increase the value of the hours you already work.

I much prefer the second option.

Not Every Client Should Receive the Same Amount of Your Time

This is an area where people sometimes become uncomfortable.

They believe that every client should be treated exactly the same way.

I disagree.

Every client should receive the level of service you promised them.

But that doesn't mean every client should receive the same amount of your personal time.

If you have hundreds of clients, it is simply impossible.

This is why I believe strongly in segmentation.

And I do not segment clients based purely on wealth.

For me, the strongest client relationships tend to contain two things:

future opportunity and a strong relationship.

They may have additional needs in the future.

They may introduce me to other people.

But just as importantly, we have a strong relationship based on trust and loyalty.

Some of the wealthiest people I have worked with over the years would not necessarily qualify as my best clients.

They may have substantial assets, but if the relationship is difficult, if they constantly abuse my team's time or there is no loyalty, that has to be taken into account.

The objective is to invest your time where it can create the greatest long-term value.

Growth Does Not Always Mean Adding More

When people talk about business growth, they usually think in terms of addition.

More clients.

More staff.

More meetings.

More products.

More revenue.

But sometimes the smartest way to grow is to remove something.

A client who takes enormous amounts of time and creates very little value.

A process that no longer works.

A meeting that serves no real purpose.

A responsibility that should have been delegated years ago.

Or even a relationship that drains your energy and keeps you from focusing on better opportunities.

Growth can require subtraction.

And that is not always comfortable.

But meaningful progress rarely happens entirely inside the comfort zone.

Look at the Clients You Already Have

One of the things that continues to surprise me in financial services is the number of advisers who tell me:

“I need more prospects.”

They may already have 300, 500 or even 800 existing clients.

And I often ask:

Have you spoken properly to the people you already know?

Because your existing client bank may contain some of the greatest opportunities in your business.

People's lives constantly change.

They change jobs.

Their income changes.

They have children.

Their children leave home.

They inherit money.

They buy property.

They move closer to retirement.

Their financial objectives change.

Their attitude towards risk changes.

The advice that was suitable five years ago may no longer be appropriate today.

That is why I prefer a planning meeting to a traditional review meeting.

A review looks backwards.

A planning meeting looks forward.

Instead of simply asking what has happened during the past year, we ask:

What happens next?

That small change can completely alter the conversation.

In my own business, a significant amount of new business comes from existing clients because we keep planning with them rather than simply reviewing what has already happened.

Great Service Is More Than Customer Care

Another principle I believe strongly in is making service visible.

Most businesses say they provide excellent service.

That means very little.

The real question is:

What does excellent service actually look like?

In our business, we have written standards and promises.

They are not unrealistic.

They are commitments we believe we can consistently deliver.

That written commitment matters because it makes the service tangible.

And when something goes wrong, as it inevitably will from time to time, the response matters most.

Acknowledge the problem.

Accept responsibility.

Apologise.

Then take action.

People may forget the original mistake.

But they often remember how you made them feel when you fixed it.

Consistency creates trust.

And trust is one of the most valuable assets any adviser or business can build.

Visibility Creates Authority

For many years, I assumed that people understood what I did.

I was a financial adviser.

Surely that was obvious.

It wasn't.

At one point, even my own mother believed that I essentially sold life insurance because that was the part of my work she had experienced.

That taught me a very important lesson:

People only know what you tell them.

If your clients do not know the full range of problems you can help them solve, you cannot blame them for going somewhere else.

This is one reason I believe so strongly in visibility.

Write articles.

Record videos.

Share useful information.

Educate people.

You do not need to spend your entire time selling.

In fact, constantly selling can have the opposite effect.

When you consistently share useful ideas and information, people begin to see you as an authority.

And when people believe you understand their problems, trust becomes easier to build.

That trust can naturally lead to opportunity.

Discipline Creates Freedom

When people hear the word discipline, they sometimes imagine restriction.

I see it differently.

Discipline creates freedom.

If I didn't have structure in my life and business, I couldn't do the things I do.

I couldn't serve clients, run businesses, travel, speak around the world, train regularly, and still make time for my family.

Structure allows me to do those things.

And ultimately, that leads to one of the most important questions anyone can ask:

What is your ultimate objective?

Not your target for this month.

Not your income goal for next year.

What do you ultimately want your life to look like?

My own answer is very simple.

I want choice.

I want to wake up and decide whether I work, see clients, speak at an event, go to the gym, spend time with my family or travel.

The goal isn't necessarily to stop working.

It is to have the freedom to choose.

That kind of freedom doesn't come from having no structure.

It comes from creating the right structure first.

Introducing Smarter Success

I recently explored these ideas in two live VIP sessions in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Across the two sessions, I went into much greater detail about:

• discipline and productivity

• understanding the value of your time

• client segmentation

• business structure

• life balance

• service standards

• client communication

• visibility and authority

• planning meetings

• generating more opportunity from existing clients

• creating a business that gives you greater freedom and choice

We have now made those two sessions available together as a new programme called Smarter Success.

It contains approximately two hours of focused, practical training based on the systems and principles I have developed over more than three decades in business and financial services.

This is not about reinventing everything you do.

It is about examining the way you currently work and identifying the changes that could make your time more valuable, your client relationships stronger, and your business more productive.

Because the next level of success may not require you to work harder.

It may simply require you to work smarter.

Discover Smarter Success

Get instant access to both VIP Sofia sessions for $97 and start applying the principles of smarter, more disciplined business growth today.

Sandro Forte