Blaze Your Own Path to Excellence

How to Blaze Your Own
Path to Excellence

With Terri Trespicio
Money Concepts

December 2021

territrespicio.com/getit
When I was kid, I had to play
with this girl I hated.

How often have we swallowed things
because someone else said we should?

Most people know what’s good for
them (and what isn’t).

I’m not about to tell you what you
“should” do.

To feel good about a decision, we
have to have some trust in ourselves.

Copyright © 2020 Terri Trespicio All rights reserved.
To do business with anyone, we need to
 
Be trusted.

How do we show we can be trusted?
Awards and accolades

Referrals

No sudden moves

Navy blue

No one says, “We’re good with whatever.”
In a word, excellence.

How do we measure excellence?
Awards & accolades

More AUM

More referrals

More clients
Scaling big

Staying intentionally small

Being a best kept secret

Being widely known

Excellence isn’t just how we
see ourselves…
But how we are seen.

Excellence is like the sound of a tree falling
in the forest.
 
Which means how we
communicate our excellence is
as important as achieving it.

Which was
purchased by
this woman.

Today I’m a writer, speaker,
and brand advisor.

“Stop searching for your
passion” 7M+ views

Publishes Dec 21st from

Atria/Simon & Schuster.
unfollowyourpassion.com

“One of the best feel-
good books of 2021”
Washington Post

“An especially meaningful
and much-needed read as the
workplace continues to
change in the wake of the
COVID-19 pandemic.”
Booklist

Passion isn’t one job, one
role, one anything. It’s
more like…a utility that
we all have access to.
The thesis

This book overturns
the ideas, advice, and
platitudes that keep us
from exploring our full
potential.
The thesis

There’s also no one
“right” way to run a
business, grow a team,
create a brand…
…or achieve EXCELLENCE.

Excellence is
idiosyncratic.
“ Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall, “The Feedback
Fallacy,” Harvard Business Review

We spend the bulk of our working lives
pursuing excellence in the belief that
while de
f
ining it is easy, the really hard
part is codifying how we and everyone
else on our team should get there…”

We’ve got it backward: Excellence in
any endeavor is almost impossible to
de
f
ine, and yet getting there, for each

of us, is relatively easy.”

What gets in the way of communicating
your brand of excellence?

I don’t just use language to
do the work; I use language
to discover it.

There’s what we say & who we are.
And, what we say about who we are.

Language can conceal…or reveal.

You can’t get close
to this guy.

I hate the term “branding.”

Traditional “branding”
stamps an identity on a mass
produced item to mimic
face-to-face recognition.

ownership
Branding used to be about

yours.
Cows didn’t have to mean
anything. They just had to be

All hat,
no cattle.

That’s not your problem.

You have plenty of cattle.

You’re just wearing the same hat.

It’s safe to say you’re branded
up the wazoo.
•By compliance: What you’re allowed to say

•By competitors: What everyone else is saying

•By culture: What people say you do

Logo?

Bio?

Tagline?

Fancy brochure?

Family crest?

Awards & recognition?
…Table stakes.

Anti-

commodity?
How will you become the

I don’t ask
f
irms what makes them
different.
 
Because then they tell me the very things
that don’t.

“We have a great team.”
 
“A great reputation.”

“We’ve been doing this for <#>
years”

“We care about our clients.”

“We’re committed to our business,
our clients, our values.”

“We’re passionate about what we
do.”

To get at what makes them
actually different, I ask for
something else:
Stories.

“Tell me about a time when you realized
that your work mattered.”

Get the deck!

Jargon is
professional
cliche.

(It’s kinda like
cursing—fine
with the right
audience.)

EXAMPLE: Marketing pro
clicks

scale

communications

digital strategy

list building

influence

User engagement

EXAMPLE: Financial advisor
Investments

Portfolio

Retirement

Assets

Plan

Leverage

Optimize

Think of the some industry terms
and jargon-y words you might use
to describe what you do.

Now, describe what you do
without using any of those words.

The Jargon Filter
• Can I easily define it?

• Can I take a picture of it or visualize it?

• Does it distance me from an experience or bring
me closer to it?

• Why am I using it?

• Is there a clearer, simpler way to say it? (If so, why
not do that?)

• Would the listener/reader benefit from a different
word?

Jargon is language used for a
speci
f
ic audience to expedite
meaning.

Metaphor is a universal language
to expand understanding.

What does it look like to
replace jargon with meaning?

10 ADVISORY SERVICES

If jargon is soul killing,

cliche is a recurring petty crime.

Helping you live your best life.

Retirement isn’t the end. It’s a new
beginning.

It’s over, Charlie.

“People would rather plan
a trip to Tuscany than plan
for their futures.”
It’s been said…

I asked one firm:
Why do you think
that is? And how
can you change it?

Plan my vaca
What I want to do
Plan my future
v.
What I have to do
Excitement and discovery Obligation and drudgery
Focus on what I get Focus on what I risk
Experience the benefits soon Experience them someday
Fun! Boredom.

Salads always seem like a good idea.

But they rarely satisfy.

Perseverance
Compassion
Integrity
Passion
Authenticity
Empathy
Excellence
Family

Don’t just talk “about” values.

Pick one and lead with it.

What did they want?

People who could wait.

Take a look at what you say

all the time.

Then, look closer.

One FA told me:

“We manage life-altering money.”

Hmm.

What could that look like?

Compliance is a check list.

Not a vision board.

Looking to compliance to help
you with your messaging is like…
Hiring a copyeditor to
f
igure out how to write
your novel.

When it comes to compliance, you don’t
have to be less creative, but more.

How do you give a sense of
con
f
idence without promising
results?

Let’s look at language and
tone, using a word you use
all the time: PLAN.

How about being real speci
f
ic
about who will and won’t work
with?

Process
Let’s (not) talk about your

woke up this morning

consumed with your process.
No one

It’s just that it doesn’t
matter first.
It’s not that process doesn’t
matter.

(I don’t need to know when to meet
you for a date if I haven’t decided
I’m going yet.)

You can reverse engineer meaning.

I was hired by a
f
irm, Prothro Blair, to
help them reenvision—and rename—
their brand.

We went through LOTS (and lots) of
options.

And then I came across a word I’d never
heard before.

Crossvine.

134
Crossvine
Twisting, woody vine that climbs; attractive
to hummingbirds; represents a unity
between the spirit and the body,
 
vitality, and joy.

No one had ever heard of it. That was
good news.

Let’s end on one close to your heart.

Denis kept talking about love.

You’re so much more than you think.

You’re not just a list of awards, values, or
cliches, or a box full of jargon.

You’re not just in the assets business.
 
You’re in the options business (so
why not give yourself more
options?).

What if rather than stick with one
pencil…

What if you defined niche differently?
You accessed the full spectrum of your brand?

True excellence is when what
you say matches who you are.
And it doesn’t just to grow your business,
but uplevels the larger conversation.

There isn’t one path to excellence.

Just your way.

Blaze Your Own Path to Excellence

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