The age of the McPlanner is here

Every financial planner’s practice is a franchise just waiting to happen. Instead, how-ever, most are so busy working that they do not have the time to get rich.

Every financial planner’s practice is a franchise just waiting to happen. Instead, how-ever, most are so busy working that they do not have the time to get rich.

So says Michael Gerber, the author of the E Myth who was recently in Sydney to ad-dress the FPA Convention.

He says many people keep their businesses small “believing that there is some ex-traordinary value in it, when all it is a description of their comfort zones”.

Gerber believes financial planners should remove themselves from their business and see their business apart from them, rather than a part of them.

“You have to get beyond the work you do, to the work that creates a business or your business will eat you alive,” he says.

According to Gerber, most financial planners who go into business for themselves are technicians, focused on the technical side of their business.

Technicians say “I am my business” and confine themselves to the job of work, which never ends until they do.

In the infancy stage, they build their businesses by referrals and become very busy. Their businesses grow exponentially and they move into the adolescence stage where they hire more people.

“The usual solution to the problem for a technician is to add another person,” Gerber says.

The real answer, however, would be in bringing some entrepreneurial vision to the business.

Gerber cites the story of Ray Kroc, a distributor of milkshake makers who, at the age of 52, walked into a hamburger stand in California and was surprised at how quickly the people were served.

Kroc did not see just hamburgers, however, he saw a concept that he could sell. Soon he was pitching the idea of opening up several restaurants to the stand’s owners, brothers Dick and Mac McDonald.

But, he had to get the formulae right first and set about creating a system that worked every time.

“He went to work on the business and not in it… The secret to creating one big com-pany that works is to create one small company that works,” Gerber says.

Today, Kroc’s chain, McDonald's, is the largest and best-known global food service retailer with more than 24,500 restaurants in 116 countries.

Gerber says like Kroc, financial planners have to get their businesses to work for them rather than because of them. But they should not be fixing their old companies. They should start a new company in their heads and build from there.