1) Start Early.

By the time you’re reading this blog, if you haven’t already started the process of putting together your holiday cards you need to get moving because you’re running out time! I recommend starting in mid-November ideally, but if you work quickly, you can still make it happen in the next couple of weeks. Especially as a financial advisor, you have to not only get everything prepared, printed and in the mail, you have to send it through compliance as well. With complex holiday schedules and a lot of time off during this time of year, be prepared for compliance to run a little slower than normal. As you’re working through this process now, go ahead and add a reminder in October of next year to start the process early on your Christmas cards so you’re ahead of the game.

2) Go Custom.

You know those cards you bought at Walmart for 88¢ last year after Christmas? Don’t send those. And that ad you saw about digital cards? Nope, don’t do that either. Not as your business anyway…go ahead and send them to friends and family – we won’t tell! Your corporate Christmas and holiday cards should be an extension of your brand, they should be physically printed, and they should be designed to include your logo and website address. Keep the inside blank (see the next tip) and when you send them, use a real stamp versus doing bulk postage. All of these things show attention to detail and a genuine caring for the process and your recipient.

3) Hand Write/Sign.

Yes, the idea of printing your generic message and stamping your signature on your cards sounds enticing and easy, not to mention a lot less painful than the inevitable cramped hand you’ll have after a few dozen cards. But avoid the temptation! The effort you’re putting in by intentionally hand-writing your custom message to each client and partner, hand-signing each of your cards and hand-addressing each envelope will not only be noticed, it will stand out amid the clutter of Christmas cards and catalogs your clients are about to receive. If you have an extra-long client list, consider enlisting the help of your assistant to write the message you dictate and then sign each card.

4) Do. Not. Sell.

Let me say that again – NO SELLING. This is not the time to make a sales pitch. That’s a fast way to get your card thrown in the trash and to annoy your client. Instead, refer to the introduction of this blog and show appreciation! Tell your recipient how much you’ve enjoyed working with them this year, and how much their support means to you. Be genuine, and wish them and their family well. Bonus points if your message includes a personal anecdote.

5) Be Accurate.

You’re about to send out dozens of cards to people important to your business. Are their addresses correct? Is their name spelled correctly? You’re not writing any duplicates, right? What about when you stuff the cards – are you putting Suzie’s card in Jake’s envelope? Be careful, and take the time to be accurate so you can avoid an embarrassing mistake.

6) Bonus Tip! Don’t forget your ‘gatekeepers’.

If your business runs anything like our agency, in B2B relationships you’re not working directly with the CEO. So while it’s a great idea to address your card to the boss, don’t forget about the person who’s pulling strings for you and helping to move things along. Building on that relationship with a second personalized card will go a long way.

1) Contrast is important

There are lots of ways to provide contrast. You can do it using two types of fonts (serif vs. sans-serif), varying font weights (light vs. bold), varying font sizes and cases, or even through the use of color. Regardless of how you do it, contrast provides powerful visual hierarchy and helps guide your user through your project.

2) Fit your font to your context

Fonts have moods and they convey a feeling through your final project. Choosing the wrong font to fit the feeling you’re trying to get across can complete derail the piece and create a disconnect in your user experience. For example, if you’re going for a timeless elegance, a serif font typically conveys that; whereas modern flair can often be found by using a brush font.

3) Make a decision, and go with it

When choosing fonts for your project, choose two, or in a unique situation, and as a max, three. Any more than that and your piece will feel messy, amateurish and will create a poor user experience.

4) Don’t be afraid to go out of the box

Every computer comes with a pre-installed set of fonts, such as Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman, Papyrus and Comic Sans. However, designers are coming up with new and unique fonts every day, and there are a ton of websites to get them from. Stepping outside of the pre-installed fonts to choose something that truly fits your project will not only set you apart, it will also show that you took time to craft your project.

(And please, never use Comic Sans or Papyrus. Just don’t.)

5) Legibility is important

Just like you want to consider the context and mood of your piece, it’s also important to ensure that your text is legible – otherwise you are wasting your time creating your project. If you use a curly, loopy script font for the small body copy on your website, chances are that a majority of your users are not going to be able to read it. Same goes for the small text on your business card – it has to be easy to read or no one will ever contact you from it. The easiest way to test how legible your font is, is to look at it in its actual size, and to assess it with a glance – if you can’t read it, then the font isn’t right.

6) Bonus! Google Fonts can make pairing fonts EASY

Especially for your website, but for other pieces as well, Google Fonts makes it super easy to choose fonts that look great together. Just go to fonts.google.com, find a font you like, and when you hover over it and click “see specimen” in the bottom right, it will show you popular font pairings to inspire you. Even better, you can type your own text into the font sample so you can see what it would look like before ever using that font in your project.

1) Get everyone in the same place regularly.

Two years ago, when we only had three remote employees and only one of them out of state, we made a point to pay for our out-of-state developer to come to town monthly. She only moved a few hours away, so it was an easy drive for her, and we typically would schedule critical training or team-building while she was in town – things that make more sense to do in-person.

Now, with team members in three different time zones, it’s a little more difficult to get everyone together. But we’ve made it a point to do it at least once a year. Bringing everyone together gives them an opportunity to strengthen relationships, reinforce our company mission and values, and just spend time growing together. Without this connection, I believe our team would not be as successful as we are today.

2) Utilize technology.

Even though we’ve had folks in different places for years now, we’ve only just recently started video calls through Skype for team meetings. Being able to see everyone together again has made a huge difference in re-establishing the culture we want for our team, and has helped our remote employees feel more connected to those of us here in the office. Outside of those meetings, we use Slack and GroupMe for inter-office chat and company-wide announcements – which helps to ensure that our remote team isn’t forgotten about in the flow of information.

Something that I want to start getting better at is using video chats more often for those times when a conversation warrants a phone call, for a scheduled internal meeting with a remote employee, or for a time when I would normally just holler at someone to ‘come here real quick’ – instead of using chat. If it’s important enough that I would want them sitting in front of me, then I should hit them up on Skype. There are a few more logistical details to work out before that’s my norm, though.

3) Don’t forget about small talk.

Something that our COO Coby does really well is talking. Out of nearly everyone in our office, he probably checks in with our remote employees the most, and he makes sure that each time he does, the conversation starts with a bit of small talk – the kind of interaction that those employees miss out on the most by being isolated to a home office. It’s important to remember if you have remote team members that they don’t get the benefit of saying “hi” in the hallway, or being a part of the recap of the kids’ soccer games from the weekend – unless someone deliberately makes it a point to include them or relay that information to them. One of the biggest drawbacks of being a remote employee is that it can get lonely – so make sure they still feel included with some small talk when you can.

4) Trust that they’re working hard, but don’t forget to check-in.

When I was first considering letting someone work remotely, it was a little tough for me, because I was unsure how to guarantee that they were going to get everything done that I needed them to. But after some trial and error, and a little faith, I believe our current system works pretty well most of the time. If you let someone work from home I think that you’ll find in a majority of instances, that person is going to be able to get more done in less time, with a more consistent result. While yes, there are some distractions in a home office, the right person will be dedicated to the role and will know how to manage his or her time effectively, while also benefitting from a generally quieter environment with fewer in-office distractions such as noisy chatter or overheard phone calls. You may even find that they work more than they would if they were in the office because of the benefit of continuous focus time. (That being said, make sure they don’t burn out because of it!)

It’s important to understand how to gauge the success of your remote employees. How much time are they logging each week? Are they accomplishing the goals and milestones set in place for them? Are the clients they’re working with complaining about them? Are they still trying to add value to the rest of the team or the company with new ideas or solutions?

First, friend request all your clients.

You may be the type of advisor who considers all of your clients to be friends, and you go to their family events and keep in regular contact with them. You may be the opposite, maintaining a very high level of business professionalism and keeping your clients at arm’s length, only engaging with them once or twice a year. Either way, friend request all of your clients.

Second, engage with them every day.

Here’s the easy part: get on Facebook every day, scroll through your newsfeed and look for posts that you can comment on. Spend 5 minutes doing this daily.

Don’t have five minutes? I bet you do…

• How long do you wait in line for your coffee every morning?
• How long do you spend eating your breakfast at your desk every morning?
• Do you commute on the train? How can you be using that time to build your business?
• What about lunch time? Are you eating at your desk and trying to type with one hand?
• I bet you don’t want to admit that your phone visits the restroom with you…

If you have the Facebook app on your phone, it’s much easier to multi-task, scroll through your newsfeed and comment from there, because you can be doing that typically one-handed, and you don’t have to be at your desk to do it.

It’s important to say again, you need to be commenting, not just reacting. Reacting – Liking, hearting, laughing – that does nothing. How often do you look at the names to see who liked your post? Probably never. But commenting – more often than not, people get notifications on their phone when someone comments on a post. They read those comments, often reply to those comments. I can practically guarantee that your comment will get read. It doesn’t even have to be an elaborate comment. If they post a picture of their new grandbaby, you can say, “Great picture, congratulations!” If they post a picture of the beach that they’re currently relaxing on, you can say, “Wow I’ve always wanted to go there, you’ll have to tell me about it sometime!”

So what is a client filter, and how I do get started?

A client filter, or an audience persona, as we tend to call it here at LMG, is an imaginary person that you’ve set up as a means for making sure that the way you’re doing business appeals to your ideal client. Going through this exercise to create a client filter is critical, especially when it comes to marketing efforts, because it allows you to know who it is that you’re actually trying to target, and to get a feel as to whether or not your efforts will appeal to that person, so that you’re not wasting time, money and energy.

For example, our personas are Chris and Cheryl. Whenever we’re looking at launching a new product or going after a new market, we always put our ideas through the “Chris filter” and the “Cheryl filter” to determine if what we’re doing would appeal to them. We also do this when we’re looking at ways to improve our internal processes to make things easier and more streamlined – both for us and for our clients. If we run our ideas through the Chris or Cheryl filter and the answer is “no, that would not appeal to him/her,” we either don’t do that thing, or we adjust how we’re doing it until it will appeal to Chris and Cheryl.

To get started, we recommend grabbing someone else that can help you go through the exercise of creating these personas. This person will be responsible for taking down what you’re saying and for prompting you for more details as needed. Then, just start talking. Describe this persona in detail, as if you were describing your best friend. What are they like? What do they wear? What do they look like? What do they like to do? What organizations do they support? What do they drive? Where do they work? What makes them happy? All of these details are important.

Once you have everything written out and organized into a document, jump over to a stock library (paid or free, it doesn’t matter), and find a picture that best encapsulates that persona you just created. Obviously you’re not likely to find a picture that matches absolutely perfectly, but look for one that matches mostly. Drop that photo into your document, so that you have everything together for future reference. Doing this will allow you to put a face to the name, the same way you would when you’re picturing the client you just had lunch with. Once the persona is created, file it away somewhere that you can easily access it, and be sure that your employees have access to it too, so that everyone can run ideas and processes through this new filter.

Keep Track

Write. It. Down. Everything. All the time.

The basic principle is this: write down everything you’re spending your time on, and how much time you’re spending. The easiest way to do this is to write what time you started and what time you ended, and then do the math at the end of the day when you’re reviewing how productive you were.

Going through emails for 30 minutes? Write it down.
Meeting with your team for 2 hours? Write it down.
“Taking a break” on Facebook for *gasp* 15 minutes?? Write. It. Down.

If you were to commit to this for even just one week, it can offer you an insane amount of insight in to where your precious time has been spent. You may discover that you have a problem client who has managed to drag you way over scope on their project. Or you may discover that you spend so much time explaining things to one employee that you need to do some more training with him or her.

I could do a whole other post on the value of having a yellow-pad and functioning pen at your side all the time. I use mine for my time tracking, for ideas, for to-dos and everything in-between. This process will seem tedious and like a waste of your valuable time in the beginning, but you’ll thank yourself for doing it in the long-haul. If you’re a techie, there are about a million apps and online time tracking systems – many of them even integrate with popular project management and CRM software. Whatever your preference, find a way to track your time and use it.

Categorize and Analyze

At the end of your day, put it on your calendar to allocate 10 minutes to look over your time tracking results (and write that down too!). Take a look at the types of things you’re spending your time on, and look for ways where you can be more productive. Could you group all of your email responses into a single block twice a day so that you can spend less time being reactive? Some other categories you might utilize include: team meetings, phone calls, lead generation, follow-ups, errands, breaks and non-income-producing tasks. Looking at your day from a statistical, analytical standpoint will help you to step back and figure out where things can change so that you can be more productive and a better asset to your company.

Give Yourself a Deadline

Now that you’ve identified where the problems are, you can start controlling your day, instead of it controlling you. Start by looking at the categories you’ve established, and then breaking them down into a measurable block of time. For example, if all week you’ve spent an average of an hour handling email each day, then put two 30-minute blocks on your calendar to handle email – one early in the day and one later in the day. That way it’s a standing appointment with yourself and you can feel confident that it’s a) not going to get forgotten about and b) you can handle other things without worrying what’s coming in, and therefore getting yourself out of a reactive state. Continue tracking your time and make adjustments to your blocks as necessary. You can even turn this into a game! I’m a generally competitive person, and it actually helps me to focus to know that I’m racing the clock to get something done.

I highly recommend utilizing a calendar for this approach. In our agency, we use Google products, and my calendar is often full of blocks for me to handle tasks in my queue, in addition to the meetings and calls that I have. This way, I know when I can actually handle another request for a meeting, versus filling my calendar with them and not getting anything else done.

Don’t Be Afraid to Delegate

Your effectiveness as a leader isn’t simply defined by how well you can juggle 50 tasks and how many all-nighters you can handle. It’s defined by how well you can empower your team and how seamless your company can run – even when you’re not around. You have to start by hiring the right people, and then you build your success by training those people to handle things the exact way you would handle them yourself, and you empower them to make decisions for the benefit of your client. If your team can operate without every decision being made by you as their boss, that means that everyone can focus and get more done and clients will reap the benefits. I wrote more about employment strategies in this article.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Author Gary Vaynerchuk is a four-time New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneurial giant that took his family’s local liquor store from a “brick and mortar” business that was profiting $3 million a year to an online e-commerce giant that was profiting $60 million a year, in just 5 short years.

Vaynerchuck can sometimes have a “colorful” way of explaining concepts, but his advice is sound and time-tested. In his current bestseller, Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence – And How You Can, Too, he explains how being his vibrant, personable self was absolutely fundamental to his entrepreneurial self. Vaynerchuck takes an unconventional approach to building success and encourages his readers to go one step further to build the life they want, not just the business they want.

If you want to follow Vaynerchuck, oftentimes referred to as GaryVee, he has a podcast available on 12 different platforms, a blog that he publishes to at least a couple times a week, various live events throughout the world, and he is active on four different social media platforms. He also has five different books, available at most major booksellers.

Cam Marston

One of the newest authors that I’ve discovered through my regular professional development reading is Cam Marston. He’s an author, columnist, blogger, lecturer and business owner, and so far, all of his books have been incredibly insightful reads. Marston specializes in how the different generations and their tendencies can affect the market, and how the business owner should conduct themselves accordingly.

Marston’s latest book, which I finished just recently, is called The Gen-Savvy Financial Advisor, and it’s become a new favorite. It’s designed to prepare you to sustain a healthy business, as you strive to connect with the different generations, including Baby Boomers, Gen-X, and Millennials. In previous blog posts, I interpreted and summarized what I learned and how you might apply it in your business, so be sure to check those out.

If you’d like to learn more about Cam Marston and follow his work, he’s the CEO of Generational Insights, where he publishes weekly blogs and has a podcast. He’s also active on Twitter and lectures live around the world.

Scott and Alison Stratten

The last folks that I wanted to mention, even though they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, are Scott and Alison Stratten. They’ve published several books together, but my favorite is Un-Marketing. Like Vaynerchuck, they oftentimes use colorful language to get their points across, and if you’re a fan of audiobooks, it’s a riot to listen to. Another of my favorites is QR Codes Kill Kittens: How to Alienate Customers, Dishearten Employees, and Drive Your Business into the Ground. They use this obtuse title to grab your attention and instead of overwhelming you with things you “should” be doing, they instead give you a list of things you absolutely should not be doing. It’s a refreshing take on professional development.

The Strattens are co-owners of what has become a global brand, Un-Marketing Inc., co-authors of 5 best-selling books, and active on Twitter. They’re also live keynote speakers worldwide and have an active podcast.

About Millennials

Millennials are the largest generation in American history, and they have immense spending power. As the holders of social currency, they determine what’s relevant and shape the way business is done online.

Many from this generation have never known life without the internet, and they value technology greatly. Technology has made it very easy for millennials to gauge their peers’ opinions, and they rely heavily on their recommendations. Communication is often informal among this generation.

Because of the wealth of information available at their fingertips, millennials pay attention to the events and trends that affect society. They focus on diversity and tolerance. They are also passionate about buying and investing for a cause.

Millennials are the most educated generation in the U.S. to date. This has had a great effect on the social norms of this generation. Due to pursuing more education, adult milestones such as marriage and having children have been pushed later into their late 20’s and 30’s.

How They’re Doing Financially

Due to the downturn of the economy in their lifetime and a job market that has not kept up with the vast number of college graduates with immense student loan debt, millennials are concerned with financial security. Many have had to downsize their dreams to make ends meet. These circumstances have made them reluctant to save and invest, and they will have to save more and longer than their parents. The lack of ability or desire to seek financial planning causes millennials to prefer convenient products over traditional ones.

How to Meet Their Needs

Pay attention to how you conduct yourself when trying to win over the business of a millennial. After reflecting on a meeting or two, you may realize the format of your meetings need to change. Business should progress as quickly and easily as possible to keep their interest. Millennials also greatly appreciate any free offerings you can give them.

As a generation that is accustomed to being able to find out most anything through social media and which communicates mainly online, protect your online reputation and let your involvement with social or environmental causes be made known. Transparency will win over a millennial. They will see through it if you try too hard.