9 Gifts To Make Your Practice Grow In 2024

Matthew Jarvis, CFP®, shares nine gifts you can give your practice this holiday season to set your business up for success in the coming year.

5.5 min read

I have spent this week with my family pondering the Spirit of Christmas.

Christ, our Savior, came down and sacrificed Himself for the salvation of our souls. We have been able to celebrate His birth, which is astounding. He’s also given us gifts and talents.

During the holiday season, it’s our obligation to think about which gifts and talents we’ve been given.

Have you considered that your business and profession are gifts and talents you should utilize and maximize in the coming year?

Building and improving on your talents is a lot of hard work—I’m sure Santa Claus didn’t bring you a perfect practice this year. And you probably didn’t find a Value Sledgehammer in your stocking.

If you want to see changes in your practice in 2024, what better way to celebrate the season than to share twelve gifts you can give your practice this coming year? 

1. You cannot spell “time-blocking” without Surge

The best gift you can give yourself is to start time blocking and using a Surge schedule this coming year.

Surge can take on so many different flavors, but at its essence, Surge is being hyper-intentional in your practice so that you can deliver massive value to your clients.

Take a look at your calendar. When are you delivering massive value to your team?

Being more intentional with your time and Surge calendar is the best gift you can give your family this year.

When it comes to time blocking and doing Surge, it’s easy to forget that Surge is a journey, not a destination. You’ll never arrive at Surge. With each cycle, you’ll find ways to make the process smoother for your team and add more value to your client’s lives.

2. Give the Value Sledgehammer instead of Volume Suckerpunches

Doing more isn’t always better in your practice. You don’t want to flood your clients with so much information; they must start filtering your outreach.
That’s not value—it’s noise. And the extra volume wastes everyone’s time.

This year, when you meet up with other successful advisors, ask them how they articulate a particular hang-up you’re experiencing in your practice.

When you come across an advisor whose practice you respect, don’t be shy about asking to compare notes on how they do estate planning or onboarding. There’s so much you can learn from each other.

And don’t forget to look at both ends of the ladder; you may find advisors a few rungs below you who are rocking in an area you struggle with.

3. Be effective

So many people talk about being efficient, which means they do some things really, really well. But I want to be effective with my time.

Being effective with my time means I’m doing the right things really, really well. So often, we see advisors who become hyper-efficient at useless tasks that don’t deliver value. But they don’t want to let it go because they spent so much time refining this unproductive process.

For many advisors, filtering email is one of those efficient yet unproductive things that advisors can’t let go of.

If you have a task or process that isn’t worth $1000 an hour, you need to hand that process over to team members so you can focus on the tasks that drive the needle in your practice.

4. Get rid of freebies, freeloaders, and exceptions

These people pretend to be clients who don’t want to pay your fee or expect a discounted fee because they’re friends of your uncle’s neighbor’s cousin, so they want to be an exception.

You can’t have these kinds of people in your life. They destroy your revenue and your self-confidence. They don’t value your time now, and they never will. They don’t respect you and it’s playing heavily into your head trash.

Let those people go.

5. Define new clients

What do you consider a new client? If you don’t have that definition written down on paper, you must do that ASAP.

I love to use the Three P’s: Personable, Profitable, and Productive.
Personal is a little tricky to define; that’s up to you. But you need to be able to quantify Profitability and Productivity.

You must have a hard minimum for new clients in x dollars of revenue. Having a soft minimum for your target clients would also be a good idea.

If someone comes in below your hard minimum for revenue, you’ll have to explain that your fees will be detrimental to their success and help them find an advisor who would be a better fit.

6. Deliver massive value in tax planning

When you learn how to provide tax planning, you’ll find that you’re the only person in your client’s life who has ever offered meaningful tax advice. This can be a game-changer for winning prospects and retaining clients.

But you have to be able to back that up.

This year, look for ways you can boost your tax knowledge. If you’re looking for a program to improve your game, our friends at Retirement Tax Services can help you get a leg up on tax planning in 2024.

7. Cut your opportunities to play office

Apparently, you can’t just stop playing office—we all do it because it’s fun. But you can reduce opportunities to play office and time-block moments for you to indulge in this guilty pleasure.

Be intentional with the time you spend playing office so it doesn’t spill into your working or family time.

When you show up to work, make it count, and find ways to reduce the temptation to scroll on your phone.

8. Give yourself professional development

You must invest in yourself for 2024 to be your best year ever. You cannot go into this coming year doing exactly what you did last year if you want to make any progress.

Take advantage of our Masterclasses for Surge, Estate Planning, One-Page Financial Plans, and other exciting additions we have lined up for next year. Heck, you could even become an INVICTUS Member to revolutionize your practice.

9. Hire a virtual assistant

Arthur Brooks wrote that there are three ways you can buy happiness, and one of those ways is buying time through delegation.

Hire somebody who can help you reach your goals and get those nagging to-dos off your plate so you can focus on the other eighth gifts you can give your practice this year.