I started my career in financial services 35 years ago, before the birth of many everyday technologies like smartphones, tablets and even the World Wide Web. Just as we as a society have come to rely on certain technologies, I, too, as an experienced financial advisor, have come to rely on them for my practice as well.
Some of my peers feel that technology is intimidating or requires too much up-front investment, in both time and money. What I’ve learned over almost four decades in this business is just the opposite – that the right tech actually buys you time.
For any old-school dogs hesitant to learn new tech-savvy tricks, I encourage you to take these three steps to digitize your practice:
Go paperless. Moving from paper to pixels does require upfront scanning time, but it pays you back tenfold in efficiencies. Imagine 35 years of documents and paperwork files. Now imagine searching through rows of files for client onboarding documents, financial plans and year-end reviews. I began scanning all documents to become paperless before it was trending, and I’m so glad I did. Being able to easily search for and share documents has saved countless hours and helped make my team much more efficient.