 Beating Emotional Retirement
 We supposedly live in a world where money buys you happiness. Working in the financial industry then should make you really, really happy. Right? So WHY are so many advisors unsatisfied?
Surveys suggest that nearly half of all advisors live in this state at any given time. I may have written this already for the advisor audience, but it’s a message that bears repeating: Many advisors are what I label as emotionally retired. They’ve had enough, they’re on auto-pilot or dead from the neck up and they’ve lost their inspiration for their business.
I am here today to tell you that this marketplace requires inspiration. At conferences and presentations, I tell my audience to look to their left, and then look to their right. You could be that audience member – you’re still here! They say recessions, even the worst ones, last about 18 months. This last one has carried on for longer than that and you’re still here. Now what are you going to do about it?
I say you owe it to the clients who are still with you, to your staff, if you have staff, to yourself and to your practice to be present and clear-headed for your clients and “in the present moment for yourself. Clearing the haze, the cloud, the roadblocks, that bogged down or distracted feeling – whatever that feeling is for you – is the first step. The haze is not difficult to clear. I will get into the ‘how-to’ of that later on in this
article.
The reasons for feeling bogged down are completely understandable – just as dentists spend all day leaning over people, connected in a sense, picking up all that fear and anxiety, you are just as prone as the unhappy dentist in an environment like this.
You can be compassionate as a financial advisor – you want to help people. You hear what the client is going through and you pick up the negative emotions. How do you release that negative energy? The fear and anxiety you pick up from clients, while facing your own thoughts about your own old age and retirement, bad economic or market news, not to mention over the top, chipper sales advice, or the latest profile of some super hot shot who managed to put his best foot forward (and best face forward during the interview) to create huge successes without revealing any realistic human failings.
(Why can’t I be like that? Why doesn’t MY business run that smoothly? I must be a failure.)
Even if you’re not affected in this way, there are other traps.
Back in 1994 I lost my business. I had taken every sales training and personal development course known to human kind, but I still lost my business. It came as a major shock to everyone who knew me. (At the time I owned the number one Anthony Robbins franchise in North America.)
Looking back, I understand now that it was simply because I didn’t pay attention to certain details. Although I was always well prepared for the day ahead, I wasn’t well prepared for the year ahead. I learned the most important business activity I could engage in wasn’t the mastery I had achieved in marketing and sales (in the end I couldn’t even sell my way out), it was the planning and preparation, not to mention the organizational structure and systems on which my business operated. As a result of this experience, I have dedicated the rest of my business life to helping others avoid making the same mistakes.
Today I still believe this is the best time to be a financial advisor. Sure, times are tough, but there is an equal amount of opportunity out there to be seized. Age 80 is still the fastest growing demographic. A huge number of assets will be transferred to younger clients. And, despite all of this, roughly 80% of financial advisors, your competitors, don’t have a written vision, business plan or 90 day goals. From the surveys that I do across the country, I suspect the number is even higher than that. As well, many financial advisors are not emotionally intelligent enough to handle the stress of this latest downturn. They will quit or retire.
To seize or take advantage of this opportunity though requires a clear head. Happily, as I mentioned earlier, clearing the “haze” or moving out of that state of emotional retirement is not all that difficult, but it does require a conscious effort.
Emotions that are not expressed and all those little (or big) things bothering you can fester when they’re not dealt with. Whether you’re aware of it or not, they can take up an inordinate amount of space and preoccupation that your clients and staff pick up on.
I have a clearing process I work on with my coaching clients. At first, it can seem a little “out there,” a little soft and a little too personal, but I have been told and I know that the end result can be remarkable.
In a nutshell, I tell clients to write down every little thing that bothers them and every negative feeling they have, then forgive themselves, in writing, for having that feeling in the first place. The third step requires a little creativity. I ask clients to then reframe the negative feeling, to replace it with a new emotion or thought to take the old thought’s place.
This is a journaling exercise, or a note written by yourself, to yourself. This exercise will end up looking a bit different for each person, but here’s an example:
Step 1: I feel worried about this upcoming meeting where we will need to discuss lost savings.
Step 2: Forgive me for feeling worried about this upcoming meeting where we will need to discuss lost savings.
Step 3: Forgive me for forgetting that I’ve put a quality plan in place, that I am a good advisor, that I do in fact have this client’s best interests at heart and that I am doing the best that I can.
Doing this for each and every item on your list takes time, commitment to do this exercise regularly and determination to push back against the Ego which will no doubt resist, but it will also clear a remarkable amount of space in your head.
The space to realize and realign yourself with all of the good that you do and deliver in your practice every day. |
Enjoy the read and thank you for the opportunity to be of service.
The results are promising and I want to take this to the next level – which is where you come in.