Put Me In Financial Planner Coaching, I’m Ready To Play … Or Not?

Wednesday brought an e-mail from a financial planner coaching client that I worked with nearly ten years ago.  My past financial planner coaching client advised me that they were burned out from the business and that they were considering leaving the business and that they were feeling a strong pull to consulting, leadership coaching and executive coaching. They said that they once had a financial planner coach that inspired them so much they decided this was what they wanted to do.

There is no question that my past financial planner coaching client has the constitution and will and can accomplish anything that they set their mind to.

At the same time, I offered my client some tough love and reminded them not to throw the baby out with the bath water.  According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something so don’t throw the 10,000 hours away that you already have in career development unless you have 10,000 hours and a hell of a strong constitution to reinvent yourself.

Here is my reply.

Hi ____________,

Thanks for staying in touch.

Unmet needs can be a blessing and a curse … they can drive us and left incomplete they make one think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence because the ego is still trying to get the unmet need met from outside of the self and in this case, possibly from the last career … which can never be. So the ego makes the present career wrong.  Unmet needs are what drive a lot of people into coaching and the ego tricks the person into thinking again, the answer is out there which again it is not … the coach tries to work with others and if the coach is not clear, the egos of their clients will eat them alive fore a client will bring the coach something that they have dealt with, something they are dealing with or something that they have never dealt with.

I would take a long hard look at if you really want to walk away from years of experience.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a new book called Outliers and talks about “the 10,000 hour rule” in that is what it takes to be exceptional in a business, career or profession.  Someone said, 10,000 hours to get good, 10 minutes to prove it.

Click here is a great excerpt out of the book.

You may be well on your way to having invested 10,000 hours in working on, not in your current career …

Do you have the constitution to put in another 10,000 hours in working on a coaching or consulting practice … before you get good?

Food for thought.