Back to school season has arrived! The big yellow buses are back on the road, Target shelves are wiped clean of pens and notebooks, and the post-drop-off rush of moms at Starbucks is about to ramp up.
I loved going back-to-school as a kid – new sneakers, a new Trapper Keeper, and new classes with teachers who hadn't yet pegged me as an Eddie-Haskell-type troublemaker.
I still get the back-to-school feelings each September and it inspires me to clean my office, break out a fresh notebook, and start making plans – BIG PLANS – about how organized I'm going to be this year.
Step One is to make a list of all the things I'm going to accomplish in the next twelve months. Step Two is to build the schedule that dictates when those tasks will happen. Something about getting it down on paper feels so good. And having my own little "business syllabus" to review when I'm getting anxious helps calm the "am I doing everything I'm supposed to do?!?!" jitters.
It's similar to one of the chief concerns I hear from advisors - they worry they will miss something important for their clients. When I ask to see their annual service calendar though, they blush and tell me they don't have anything "formal" in the way of a calendar. They just address things as they come up.
Yikes.
This would make me nervous too. And although I absolutely LOATHE the idea of any one-size-fits-all template for advisors, I decided to draft a basic annual service calendar to help them out.
The problem is though, you can't apply the same calendar to a 25-year-old accumulator that you would use with a 74-year old retiree. They have different needs and your service calendar should reflect those needs.
So I decided to create four basic client avatars – accumulator, pre-retiree, retiree, and high net-worth clients - and built service calendars for each of them. And that felt a bit better.
But then I got to thinking about all the special scenarios that can pop up with individual clients. What about those who have special needs kids? Or are small business owners? Or still have outstanding student loans?
My basic annual service calendars could get bloated quickly if I tried to cram all of those special scenarios in a single calendar.
So I thought - why not create a bespoke calendar – one that is as unique as each client. It's not really that difficult to do. So I did. Here's how I envision it being implemented in the real world:
* When a client onboards build their bespoke calendar based on their current circumstances.
* Every year, during their annual review, see what has changed for them and update their calendar. Take things off, add things on and hit print.
*Use tags to represent all the planning items applicable to that client.
Each month (or quarter), run a tag report and you'll instantly see who needs what done and assign tasks. In fact, there's no reason you couldn't build that as an automation that kicks off a bespoke set of tasks for each client.
Never miss an RMD, 709, or IDR review again.
If you're interested in checking out the service calendars, hop on over to my resource library. And if you need help building this out in your system, call me. My business syllabus says that September is my month to help you get organized.