New Advisor - Knocking on 20,000 doors

I guess the key lesson I've learnt so far from reading a few posts here is that it's possible for anyone as long as you put in honest intelligent work

First thing you need to do is buy the book by Nick Murray called "The Game of Numbers." It's so good, you can finish it in a few hours. It's the holy grail of advice for new advisors starting out with $0 AUM which I'm assuming you are.

Second, like Fitness said, you need to set a goal of prospecting approaches you do per day. As you will learn in the book, prospecting is just like anything else. Wanna start working out? How suitable is it to workout day 1 for 3 hours? Your goal is to run a mile without stopping yet you are 350lbs and haven't ran in 10+ years? How's that going to workout if you try to run the full distance the starting day of your challenge?

I made a thread over on the prospecting and marketing page titled "The 500 Day War." It documents my struggles and successes. It's pretty cool and I have had amazing feedback from it. I'm almost on Day 400 out of 500 and I can tell your from first hand experience, this is a fucking grind both mentally and physically.

Not saying you can't do it, but knocking on 20,000 doors in 1 year is no joke. I've knocked on 5,000+ doors the past 8 months and that's a lot of doors my friend. Here's what you have to factor in though. Appointments scheduled that day, weather, interruptions (we all have them), distance between homes, and what doors are you knocking on? For example, my approach is different. I will NOT knock on a door with garages down and lights off. I only knock where I see life. Garage opened, car in drive way, storm door open, lights on, etc. Am I probably missing a lot of contacts by not doing that? Sure, but again, this is a game of numbers. I play towards the stats of how many people answer with garages down. Less than 10%. 

To sum this up, I'm going to reference Murray again. The perfect example of this job goes like this. You walk into a casino and I point to a slot machine and tell you, "Fubu, that slot machine is going to pay you $1million dollars. All you have to do is pull the lever 50,000 times. Once you hit pull 50,000, the machine is going to pay you $1million dollars. Here's the catch Fubu, on every pull, something is going to happen. One time you pull, you're going to get yelled at and cussed out. Another pull, you're going to get a revolver pulled on you and pointed right at your head (true story happened to me not too long ago), and another pull you're going to get dogs barking at you wanting to bite your leg off. Also, you're going to sweat, get cops called on you, be posted on numerous Facebook homeowner pages, be so tired and mentally drained you can't seem to pull another time, and viewed by 99% of people as scum.

Fact: I'm a few years away from 30 years old and I'll be a million dollar producer in 5 years or less starting from $0 AUM in a town where I didn't know a soul. 

I tell you that not to brag, but show you that it can be done. It just takes a lot of hard fucking work and balls of steel.

Are you willing to do it?

Wolf

I'me somewhat relatively new to investment business and indy and mainly did cold-calling.  I was focused on disability insurance and life but over time I've realized that using the same energy to grow investment assets will help to build an annuity and the assets are 'stickier' meaning that the money is there already and unless you really mess up people won't transfer out to another broker.  The tough part about insurance is you always have tom find new clients and even when you do find someone interested you are limited by budget, their health and the insurance companies decision to insure them