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Julie Littlechild is a speaker, author, researcher, and founder of AbsoluteEngagement.com. She helps successful professionals and entrepreneurs design businesses that support the lives they want to live and to create lives that fuel their capacity to do just that. Julie has worked with and studied top producing professionals, their clients and their teams for twenty years. She is the author of The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement, as well as a popular blog. Julie was twice identified as one of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Planning by Investment Advisor Magazine and has won the Influencer Award in practice management from Financial Planning Magazine.

Takeaway quote:

“I realized that success wasn’t just about client engagement, but client engagement in the context of deeper personal engagement.”

Show Timeline

3:02 From client engagement to advisor engagement
Successful advisors and their alignment between personal team and client engagement
4:37 Insights from interviews with successful advisors
Hints of a different approach to designing their businesses and lives
6:14 Julie’s personal journey
Asking herself critical questions at critical life moments
8:51 Different kinds of changes toward achieving absolute engagement
Two advisor case studies
10:40 Definition of absolute engagement
What 15% of advisors do differently, and the impact they see
14:17 The three principles for moving toward absolute engagement
The fundamentals that will inspire action
17:09 The five steps
Working through each step to help break through individual barriers
19:22 Awareness: the first step
The importance of self-talk without self-editing
20:56 Audacity: the second step
The importance of setting big goals
25:44 Understanding your ‘why’
Thinking about what truly inspires you, and the reasoning behind it
31:03 The real and perceived risks involved in making big changes
Why personal risk is a bigger obstacle than professional risk
33:16 The reasons and pitfalls of working gradually toward the goal
Making a bold decision and putting a stake in the ground to ensure action
36:24 The difference between satisfaction and engagement
Define your target client, create an extraordinary experience with them
38:24 How passion leads to referability
Tailoring the business to needs of ideal clients and attracting more of them
40:42 Client journey map
Creating a consistently great level of service across different contact points
42:59 Active vs. passive loyalty
The power of active appreciation and education, leading to more referrals

Links

Website: www.absoluteengagement.com
Book: The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement
Blog: http://www.absoluteengagement.com/blog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jlittlechild
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julielittlechild/

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

Steve Wershing:

Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing, and on this week’s show, I have the opportunity to interview my cohost, Julie Littlechild. Known as the creator of the Client Audit and for her research on client engagement, Julie has a new book out, Absolute Engagement. It turns out that to get clients better engaged, you need to be engaged yourself, and in Absolute Engagement, she discusses how to be happier, more satisfied, and by doing that be in the top 15% of financial advisors. We’ll talk about the power of big goals. We’ll talk about the importance of audacity and helping you think differently and creatively. We’ll learn the difference between satisfaction and loyalty and what that means in terms of referrals. We’ll talk about the power of having the right clients, doing the right work, and having the right role. It’s a great conversation with some fundamental understandings about how to be in the top 15% of advisors. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Now, on with the show.

Well, Julie, it’s a special treat to talk with you, my cohost, on the show today. I’m especially excited about talking with you because you have a new book out, The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement, Intentionally Design a Business that Supports the Life You Really Want to Live. Congratulations.

Julie Littlechild:

Thank you so much. Honestly, since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to do this. So, I am just a little kid at Christmas excited.

Steve Wershing:

As a kid, you said you wanted to come out with a book about intentionally designing a business that supports the life you really want to live. You were precocious.

Julie Littlechild:

I was just slightly ahead of my time.

Steve Wershing:

I suppose so. I was like that kid on the commercial. I forget who it was, but I want to claw my way up to middle management.

Julie Littlechild:

Yeah. That was Monster.

Steve Wershing:

That was me as a kid. So, welcome now, to the ranks of published authors. How was the experience for you?

Julie Littlechild:

There was a lot of learning, I tell you that. I always think that writing is my home, my place that I can—it’s not easy for me, but I get into a bit of a flow. I loved the fact that I could go a little broader with the messages that I was trying to send out. I really enjoyed the writing process. Then, of course, I started to learn about all the details of actually getting published and printed and all of that, and there’s a lot to learn, but I feel so much smarter now.

Steve Wershing:

Yeah. It’s one of those where it sounds really appealing and it sounds like a fun project, and then, just like anything else, you get involved in it. Oh, there’s these 700,000 details that I didn’t know about. Let’s get into the content of the book. Now, I know that some people could be a little bit confused about what the book is about because you’re known for writing about client engagement, and this is actually something beyond that, isn’t it?

Julie Littlechild:

It is. I would say it’s built off the foundation of client engagement. It’s not a complete change, but really for so many years, just as you say, I spent all of my time researching and talking about client engagement. I would have probably told you that if anybody asked me, what’s the secret to success? I would have focused on client engagement. I still think, as important as it is, really what happened in my own journey and the research I was doing and the people that I was speaking with in the industry is that I pulled the camera back, if you will, and looked at a broader perspective on success. I began to realize that it wasn’t just client engagement, but it was client engagement in the context of deeper personal engagement and of course it related to team engagement. The most successful people that I saw, and I define success in a certain way, but the successful people that I saw really had this alignment between personal, client and team engagement. They were all connected. Those things together, to me, that’s absolute engagement.

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