Surprise!!!
You are busted.
The list of “quick and painless shortcuts” that you’re looking to find? It’s a unicorn. It’s a mermaid. Really nice to imagine, but it doesn’t exist. Not here, anyway.
Sorry to disappoint you.
Here’s what is real: a healthy mindset that doesn’t need the crutch of shortcuts.
And here’s the other crazy thing about shortcuts. Not only are they not helpful, they are counterproductive. They hurt you.
Don’t believe me?
Then riddle me this.
What goes bankrupt three to five years after being handed a lifetime fortune?
Give up?
Lottery winners!
Lottery winners, the most obvious beneficiaries of financial shortcuts, are three to six times more likely to declare bankruptcy than the average American. Thirty-three percent of all lottery winners go bust, in fact.
Why does this happen? I think the answer is obvious. When lottery winners—or Mike Tyson—are given the shortcut to untold millions, they wake up one morning with beaucoup bucks. Yet they lack the savings patterns, habits, mindset and learning that enable the Robert Morins of the world (more on him below) to accumulate wealth over decades without shortcuts.
Mike Tyson punched a whole lot better than he saved.
Here’s what I’m talking about. If you asked Mike Tyson how he became the youngest heavyweight champion in the world by virtue of his hard work and daily routines, he could tell you. That’s where his brilliance is. Yet, if you ask him how he learned to manage his millions and retain his winnings over the years, he couldn’t. Ironically, his brilliance and discipline as a boxer did not carry over to brilliance and discipline as an investor.
Frugality paid off for university librarian Robert Morin, who left a $4 million legacy to his alma mater.
Who’s Robert Morin, by the way? Most every advisor has a Robert Morin as a client. He’s the librarian who lived a quiet, frugal life: never going out, reading thousands of books, eating TV dinners, scrimping and saving…until he accumulated a net worth of four million bucks. Robert Morin spent a lifetime learning how to lead the frugal life and save…and ended up with more money than the man who earned, and lost, more than $400 million over the course of his career.
This is why shortcuts don’t work
As a general coaching observation, I will say this:
For any of us to take sustainable, committed actions, we need to think things through for ourselves.
With shortcuts, no thinking is required. Consequently, the outcomes don’t stick. Our brains haven’t established the patterns of behavior that come with the learning.
- This is true for lottery winners.
- This is true for Mike Tyson.
- This is correspondingly true for Horsesmouth readers who expect to read an article that magically and instantaneously transforms their mindset…without doing the thinking or the hard work that brings success.
And in the words of diva Beverly Sills: “There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going.”
Beverly Sills, formerly known as “Bubbles” Silverman, started her climb to the top at age 3.
Just to be clear, and I should have said this earlier, my definition of shortcuts is not the same as finding a good life hack or creating some new process to do a thing more efficiently. That is different. I’m all for that. We all want to find stratagems that improve our efficiencies, or allow us to do a job faster. When I refer to shortcuts, I’m talking about a core mindset where the default thinking is to avoid the essential learning that comes with the journey.
Are you a little miffed?
OK…be honest. Are you just a little bit peeved that I’m not dispensing “quick and painless” tips to becoming a million-dollar advisor? If so, I feel your pain. That’s what the attention-grabbing title promised, and I wrote the headline myself.
I do have one thing to share that’s as close as I can come to this promissory “shortcut” to million-dollar riches. It’s an upcoming Horsesmouth workshop in Dallas in November. (Watch for it in future emails from Horsesmouth!) Leading it will be Debra Taylor, a multimillion-dollar advisor. She writes often in these pages about how success requires constant reinvention and creativity, and she shares many of her practical solutions. In all my years in financial services, I have never seen an advisor lay out a road map to success as superbly as Debbie. She’s one of a kind and quite brilliant!
Yet, even with Debbie’s illustrations based on hard-won personal experience, she can’t really give you a shortcut. You’d still need to buy a plane ticket to Dallas. You’d still need to invest in, and sit through, a two-day workshop. You’d still need to digest a 350-plus-page training manual. You’d still need to decide how to best integrate Debbie’s 20-plus years of knowledge into your current practice. And you’d still need to do it!
Is this what you’re looking for, or are you still holding out for the magic beans that will take you to a land high in the sky?
Let’s come back to the failure of the shortcut mindset.
Shortcuts are for scaredy-cats and losers
Dan Waldschmidt is a world-class ultramarathoner who built a million-dollar career as a business owner and motivational speaker. He maintains that our success is a frame of mind, not a destination. He emphasizes focusing on the journey, not the endpoint.
Dan Waldschmidt, ultramarathoner turned motivational speaker.
Moreover, he says:
- Taking shortcuts doesn’t mean you end up where you want to be.
- Taking shortcuts is the wrong reaction to fear.
- Taking shortcuts undercuts the outrageous effort needed to be successful.
- Taking shortcuts is admitting failure up front.
Whoa! Dan! Hard-core stuff. But what do you expect from a guy who runs 50 miles before breakfast?
Are you in the right line of work?
Let’s jump from the frying pan into the fire.
If you find yourself constantly looking for shortcuts to financial advisor success, maybe you should be asking yourself this question:
Am I in the right line of work?
I’m completely serious here.
If you’re always looking for shortcuts, maybe you shouldn’t be an advisor. Maybe it’s just not the career for you. Please don’t take offense at this suggestion. I was an advisor for 10 years. I was pretty good at it. I liked it. But I didn’t love it. And I left it.
Today, I’m a coach to financial advisors and entrepreneurs. I love it. Most days, I’m pretty good at it too. I wake up every morning with a spring in my step. I envision doing this forever. And, looking back, my decision to stop being an advisor was an excellent career choice for me.
The magic bean strategy didn’t work out so well for Jack.
Let’s get back to you. I’m a big believer in trusting one’s instincts, and if there’s a big gap between what you should be doing as an advisor and what you’re not willing to do to build and grow your business, please pay attention to your own (non)actions!
No matter what our circumstance, we all have choices…and inaction is a subconscious choice. If you’re spending as much time looking for shortcuts as you are actively thinking and planning how to be a superior advisor, that might be a sign that your talents are better served in another occupation.
Epilogue
I trust that this is not the case. I trust that you very much like being an advisor and sharing your talents, wisdom and counsel with your clients and others. And likewise, I trust that you clicked into this article knowing full well that the best way to succeed is to throw your head straight back, laugh at your fears, hitch up your pants … and fight for the destiny you want and deserve.
You might also:
- Come into the office two hours earlier tomorrow.
- Call that one client, prospect or COI you’ve been avoiding.
- Stop working on things that distract your focus.
- Close your eyes, take a deep breath and commit to your future.
I trust that you found this helpful.