Building Wealth Through Your Business (5/6): More Than a Money Manager- The Advisor as Accountability Partner

As a business owner, you may have set a financial plan in place a while ago, but there's a good chance you've overlooked how you're staying accountable to it. and as your business evolves and your life evolves, you've drifted and maybe even lost complete sight of where you were headed. My name's Cannon Carr.

Welcome to the fifth episode of our miniseries on how to build wealth through your business and the things that owners often overlook. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to build in that accountability mechanism so that the plan you have in place is consistently followed and in fact adapts.

And in particular, how someone like a financial advisor can be much more than a money manager in this process. Uh, and so it's important to pick, you know, who your accountability partner is, and a financial advisor is often ideally suited to be them, to be that partner.

So let's touch on three unexpected things that an accountability partner [00:01:00] like a financial advisor can do for you

The first thing is to be an objective sounding board to you as you build your business. passion is so key to getting a vision in place and to working through the toughest times and to getting your team along with you. That passion is important. But that passion also introduces emotion, and that emotion very often warps the decisions you're making about the business, and it can add pressure.

Uh, you know, when things are great, uh, maybe you overdo it, and when things are not good, you over-adjust. and emotion starts to cloud clarity. So yes, passion is important, but how do you reduce emotion in making those decisions? an accountability person can actually help you stay to the original plan you set, and give you feedback when emotion [00:02:00] is coming in and changing your decisions or affecting them, particularly under pressure, so that you stay consistent with your plan

The second unexpected benefit is being able to keep perspective across what I'll call transactional advice, and provide integrated, uh, guidance across that transactional advice. Think about it. As you run your business, you have advisors who give very great expertise [00:03:00] about slices of your business.

A CPA, covering your tax filings and helping you minimize taxes each year. You've got, you know, business attorneys who, uh, help you build contracts for particular situations. if you're looking at selling your business, you have an, maybe an M&A attorney. Uh, you, you might be using an investment banker, and they're centered around optimizing that transaction.

But when it's transactional-driven, you're often not seeing the total chessboard, uh, in terms of your own what I call your North Star, you know, where you're ultimately headed and the value you're trying to create, uh, and the values you're trying to live. And so being able to see that whole chessboard is, is being able to step back across the transactions and put those transactions in the right context, and ultimately link them to those things that are most important to you.

So I like to say, this, uh, this integrated person who provides integrated advice is truly in your corner outside of the transaction, and that is so vital to your peace of [00:04:00] mind.

The third unexpected benefit is truly being that accountability partner. As a business owner, you are balancing between working on the business and in the business, and I find I often, for example, when I meet with owners, we work on the business, right? We talk about those priorities that are going to drive the best value in your business to generate ultimately your exit value, but also your own values, what's important to you to make sure those things are driving your decisions.

That is working on the business. The challenge, though, is when you get back into the day-to-day grind, you sometimes avoid the tough decisions. Uh, you get distracted by the daily fires that, that you need to put out, and you [00:05:00] sometimes uh, by avoiding tough decisions, go back to your comfort zone.

So when you're working in the business, you forget those things, or you don't hold yourself accountable to working on those things. And the right kind of partner can truly help you stick to the plan, stay consistent, and report back so that you're saying, "Yes, I'm doing those tough things we talked about that are m- in my best interest for the long term."

So a call to action for you. Who can be that accountability partner for you? Who can be that source of objective, consistent and holistic advice so that you are staying true to what's important to you, navigating, disruptions, navigating transactions, so that you're ultimately building the business on your terms and creating the life and legacy that you [00:06:00] want

Once you identify that accountability partner, share with them the things that we've talked about in this miniseries. Uh, your North Star, your th- the three Rs and how you've set those buckets. What the what your own financial planning uh, long-term objectives are. And those will help, uh, having that person will help you, a- and, and them being able to see your thinking will help them hold you accountable to long-term success

If you'd like to learn more, DM me the word align, and I will send you some thoughts on how to use an accountability partner to help you the most. Thanks for listening to this episode. Stay tuned for our next one, which is about business continuity planning and how it's not as just a reactive thing.

If you do it right, it actually builds value for your [00:07:00] business.