Most advice on finding financial planning clients is highly prescriptive.
‘Use LinkedIn.’
‘Run seminars’
‘Ask for referrals.’
Do these work?
All of them do. And none of them do. In other words, it depends.
If getting clients were as simple as following a step-by-step formula, no one would ever struggle with it.
Yet for many financial planners, it remains the hardest part of the job.
If this is true for you, would you love for that to change?
What really creates opportunity?
A story shared by my friend Barb Patterson illustrates something powerful.
Years ago, two shoe salesmen from competing companies were sent to Africa to assess the potential market for shoes.
The first salesman looks around for several days and then goes to the telegraph office to report back to company headquarters. He wrote:
‘Research complete. Unmitigated disaster. There is no market for our products here. Nobody here wears shoes.’
The second salesman, from Bata shoes, also looks round for several days and goes to the same telegraph office to report back his findings. His message back to headquarters was:
‘Research complete. Glorious opportunity. There is a huge opportunity for our products here. Nobody here wears shoes!’
Bata shoes are now known as the shoes of Africa and advertising for them appears all over, even in the most remote places.
What is the lifeblood of finding financial planning clients?
Both salesman went to the same place. Yet each saw something completely different.
This is why following other people’s advice doesn’t always work.
Opportunity isn’t something ‘out there.’ It’s something you realise and comes to you as a thought.
And what determines that is your state of mind.
Two minds, two realities
Imagine for a moment you have two minds:
Your personal mind is primarily concerned with itself. It chatters away. It worries. It fixates on what’s not working or what it perceives as missing.
From this place, opportunities are hard to see – and even harder to act on.
Your universal mind is calm, expansive, and connected. It doesn’t chase or strive. It’s where creativity, insight, and clarity arise naturally. From here, you see opportunity. You connect with people. You act without over-thinking.
So, many financial planners find getting clients difficult, not because it is inherently difficult. We find something difficult because of the state of mind we bring to it.
Does science back this up?
In quantum physics, everything is energy. Everything is connected.
Therefore, you are not separate from what you want.
But the personal mind creates the illusion of separation. It makes you feel like you’re on your own, grinding away, trying to make something happen.
Neale Donald Walsch put it like this:
‘Nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer. Everyone sees a different truth because everyone is creating what they see.’
Where do clients actually come from?
They don’t come from LinkedIn. Or networking. Or seminars.
Not initially.
They come from:
*Connecting.
*Curiosity.
*A flash of insight.
*An impulse to reach out to someone.
*The desire to be of service.
*A fresh way of explaining your value that deeply resonates.
These are the sparks that create new clients – and they all come via the universal mind.
Do you want more of this?
My own realisation was to stop looking outside of myself for a magic bullet.
Instead, I allowed myself to relax and listen to the quieter inner nudges that were there all along, but I had so often dismissed.
This took getting clients from the hard part of my business to one that I enjoyed as much as serving my existing clients.
PS. What makes a client want to engage a financial planner? Click here.
