Editor’s note: Bryce Sanders is a longtime columnist with Rethinking65. Read more of his articles here.
Bryce Sanders
“I hate it.” The pilot episode of the cult TV series “Green Acres” (1965) has character Oliver Wendell Douglas walking onto the balcony of his Manhattan penthouse apartment, surveying the skyline and saying “I hate it.” Some financial advisors feel that way about their jobs. Have you lost your passion? What can you do?
Let’s acknowledge first that the business has improved considerably since the 1970s when financial advisors were still called stockbrokers. At that time, stocks and bonds were the only products you sold and you were paid on commission. Today, financial advisors can offer a range of investment, insurance, banking and lending products. Asset-based pricing and fees from managed money are the primary ways advisors are paid. As long as those assets remain at the firm, the advisor has an income stream; it’s almost like an annuity. The challenge many firms face is getting experienced advisors to eventually step away from their practice and transition into retirement.
However, let’s assume this is not you. Perhaps you have plenty of working years ahead of you. Maybe you’ve only been in the business for several years. But you do not feel excited about showing up for work every day. What are your options?
1. Determine How Far You Are from Financial Independence
Years ago, it was said people who worked on Wall Street “had a number.” This was the amount of money they needed in savings and investments to reach the point of financial independence. At that point, work becomes a choice, not a requirement. This is the same advice you give clients as part of retirement planning. How much do you need to accumulate? How will you get there? Use this as your motivation to keep working.
You have attended firm and industry conferences in previous years. You made friends from offices across the country. Ideally you stay in touch. Call them. Ask about how their life is going. Mention you have been feeling down lately. Have they had this problem? The answer is probably yes! Ask what they did to get back on track.
3. Meet with Your Mentor
Even if you are fabulously successful, you still should have a mentor. This person guided you in the earlier years of your career in the industry. Although you might be friends, you give them the respect you would show to a favorite professor. Set up a regular schedule. Let them know you feel you are in a rut. This is not the first time they have heard about this problem. They likely overcame it too.
4. Hire a Coach
The mentor route might be a problem because you are the top producer. What now? Consider hiring a coach or getting more engaged with the coach you already employ. They coach other advisors. They have been doing this for years. They study industry research about burnout. Olympic athletes do not assume they are naturally gifted and that is enough. They have coaches to help them stay motivated and become better.
5. Attend an Industry Conference
Some advisors do not attend conferences. They feel they know it all. Others feel they are an excuse to party and a waste of time. The role of an advisor is a lonely business. You are competing against yourself. The future movement of the stock market is uncertain. It is stressful. Attending an industry conference surrounds you with people doing the same job as you. They are not direct competitors. The energy level is high. They are successful and share ideas.
6. Get to Know Your Clients
This sounds obvious. Don’t we know them already? Suppose you make it your mission to learn “what makes them tick” and you learn about the problems that keep them awake at night. You might be able to provide a solution from other product areas of the firm. Your business grows because you are increasing “share of wallet.”
7. Train the Newer Advisors
This strategy worked for me when I was an advisor. I think I was born to teach. I get great joy out of taking a complex topic and breaking it into several simple, easy to understand concepts. I enjoy encouraging others. In addition, when I trained advisors or acted in an unofficial sales manager role, in the 1980s and 1990s, I was given additional production credits which translated into extra income for me after the firm took its percentage. In addition to your “day job” as an advisor, you could take on the training role in the office. This often comes with added pay.
8, Transition Into Management
This is something else I did after training advisors for a few years. My previous firm offered an internal route to transition into management. If you passed the assessment process, you started training to become a manager and later applied for your first management position. If you find the role of financial advisor has become routine (and you were good at it), you might move into the role of managing an office of advisors or working in the home office, as I did.
9. Find the Role You Really Like
This leads into considering the team concept. You might enjoy finding new clients, but managing the client relationship is not your favorite activity. Find another advisor in the office with that complementary skill and form a partnership. If you enjoy doing research, perhaps you join an existing team that needs an advisor to fill that role. The one thing you should not do is team up with another advisor two dislikes the same parts of the job that you hate. Two wrongs do not make a right.
10. Consider Whether Your Firm’s Culture Is the Best Fit
I believe advisors should build their career with a single firm. If they hired you, trained you and gave you a career, that makes the case for loyalty. Sometimes the firm culture changes. Your preferred way of doing business may no longer be the direction the firm is taking going forward. In this case, you might consider looking at the competition and the culture across the street. You likely know some advisors who can give you the straight story.
11. Take a Vacation
You need to vacuum your head from time to time. Perhaps you don’t get away and only take long weekends, or don’t unplug when you are away from the office. Take a good, long vacation. Two weeks might be good. Go somewhere distant. Take a cruise. Fly to another continent. Arrange with your assistant how coverage will work. You should return refreshed. You will have plenty of stories to tell your clients.
12. Consider Your Impact on Your Client’s Lives
We often get so tied up in the present and the uncertainty of the future that we forget about the successes of yesterday. Were you in a training class when you started in the industry? How many of you are still left? Who are your best clients? How did you get them? Do you care about them? Of course you do! You likely remember the Christmas film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” (1946). In the film, George Bailey has flashbacks of how terrible life might have been in Bedford Falls if he had not been there doing good throughout his lifetime. Years after I left production, I occasionally heard from clients who thanked me for those bonds we bought or the advice I gave. It is very heartening. Consider the impact you have made and the lives you have made better.
There are many ways you can renew your passion. You work in an industry where you can become successful and wealthy while helping people make progress towards achieving their dreams. Unlike Oliver Wendell Douglas proclaimed “I hate it,” you may just need a reboot.
Bryce Sanders is president of Perceptive Business Solutions Inc. He provides HNW client acquisition training for the financial services industry. His book, “Captivating the Wealthy Investor” is available on Amazon.
