It's tough to learn new tricks when you've already got a lot to do. That's why, when it comes to your business, it's important to focus on the most helpful tricks—the ones that may appear simple but, if adopted, will move your practice leagues ahead. For this Special Report, the staff of Financial Planning sought out a variety of suggestions. You'll find familiar faces here, and, we hope, some new ones. All have important things to say, from how to rethink attitudes about baby boomers to how to reconfigure your office. So try one of these new ideas and let us know how it turns out.

Joe Deitch, CEO, Commonwealth Financial Network, Boston

Develop Unshakable Contentment

To be truly successful, the financial planner must develop a sense of well-being and contentment that is virtually unshakable, especially in times like these when the markets are volatile. The goal sounds more elusive than it is. But the truth is, an advisor already has the tools and techniques of planning at his or her fingertips: To achieve confidence to run a practice, the planner could hire a life coach to sort out priorities and keep him or her on track, much the way the planner's own clients hire him or her to line up, and realign, their financial ABC's.

In addition, the planner needs to size up the practice in the same way he or she approaches an individual's portfolio, using identical ingredients—an intelligent process, which leads up to a well-considered plan that is modified periodically based on results. Finally, the advisor must regularly celebrate successes, large and small, through a system of rewards customized to the people working in the practice. A happy life is a celebrated life.

Many planners have an identity crisis. The vast majority started out as salespeople. An epiphany occurs when advisors understand that they are no longer in sales: That's when they start building their businesses, not just their book of business. Of course, many other factors affect planners, and everyone else. The world has become more complex and that creates pressures: We used to have five choices, now we have 5 million.

At the same time, the needs of advisors have grown exponentially in staffing, managing, marketing, succession planning, process mapping, operational efficiency, technological support, account security and compliance. Keeping up with all these tugs on their time and attention can cause unhappiness, if the planner has left out key preparatory measures of running a complex business.

Dave Welling, Vice President of Advisor Practice Management, Schwab Institutional, San Francisco

Learn to Delegate

In our studies, 72% of advisors articulated staffing and organization as their No. 1 barrier to future growth. We just did a cut of that data looking at firms that managed more than a billion dollars. You'd think they'd have it all figured out. But 75% of those firms indicated that staffing and organizational issues are their No. 1 barrier to growth, which is staggering. So the issue of human capital permeates from the smallest mom-and-pop operation to the largest, most complex organizations in the industry. There's a real talent crunch out there. There's not enough talent in the marketplace to serve all the clients. Advisors solved this in the past by throwing bodies at clients and spreading out workloads. But the best- managed firms have become substantially more efficient, generating 50% to 80% higher revenue per professional, as compared with other firms their size. The challenge is finding talent, but the answer is rethinking roles in the organization and how the organization is structured. The first core solution is delegation. Principals need to let go of some responsibilities that perhaps could be more efficiently done by someone else. A principal of a $300 million firm shouldn't be doing daily downloads and reconciliations. Somebody else can do that. Professionals can get support from back-office staff .So delegation is key, not just to scale in an organization but to building sustainability. The principal who tries to hold on to everything he or she did when founding the firm is not going to be able to grow, and won't have a business that's salable down the road.

Sandra Timmermann, Director, Metlife Mature Market Institute, Westport, Conn.