Kitces & Carl Ep 37: How A Mid-Career Crisis Can Turn Advisors To Focus On Public Work

Show Notes

• Ric Edelman
• Ken Fisher
• Dave Ramsey
• Ray Dalio – Principles: Life and Work
• Josh Brown
• Larry Swedroe
• Seth Godin
• Simon Sinek – Start With Why
• Stephanie Bogan – SUCCESS 2.0: Stop Licking the Lollipop of Mediocrity and Make 2020 Your Best Year Ever
• Carl Richards – One-Page Financial Plan
• Zig Ziglar
• FinTwit Community
• The Coming Golden Age Of The (Focused) Solo Financial Advisor
• What Really Motivates Financial Advisors – Intrinsic Vs Extrinsic Drivers
• How Financial Advisors Actually Do Financial Planning
• The Art Of Vision Statements: Do They Really Help Advisory Firms Grow?
• How To Publish A Guest Post On The Nerd’s Eye View

Kitces & Carl Podcast Transcript

Carl: Greetings, Michael.

Michael: Hello, Carl. How are you?

Carl: I am super good. Super good, except for one problem.

Michael: What's that?

Carl: Ideas.

Michael: Ideas?

Carl: There's too many too.

Michael: You have a problem with ideas?

Carl: I do.

Michael: I follow you on Twitter. I don't feel like you have a problem with ideas.

Carl: No, that's the point, is I have too...there's too many. I feel like...

Michael: Oh, that ideas problem.

Carl: Yes, yes, yes. So I kind of actually wanted to talk about this. I think it would be therapeutic for me. I know that you've sorted through this as well. I'm increasingly getting this question, and I think maybe we can focus it on like doing public work. I think this question is increasing because the barrier to doing public work has dropped. It's so easy to do, right?

Like, it's so easy to post, share a tweet, to use the toot machine and toot. You can use Instagram, LinkedIn, publish a book; it's not hard to do anymore. And so, therefore, it's an option. And as it becomes an option, you suddenly get into some territory where there aren’t very many maps out there for financial planners who are now doing public work.

Michael: Can you just clarify what you mean by doing public work in this context?

Carl: Yeah, I think that's an important point to even clarify. So it's one thing. And by the way, I want to be really clear up front that there's no... Sometimes when you describe writing books and doing public work and public speaking and sharing things and becoming a source for people to ask questions about, sometimes when you talk about it, it sounds like it's the way. And I think some of our marketing consulting people have perpetuated a myth that it's the way.

And then there's a whole group of many of the best financial planners in the world who have no interest in this. There is no right or wrong. For a minute, we're going to focus on this one over here. What happens when you move from serving a client base and building a financial planning practice or business, to getting asked to do a public keynote? Or writing something that isn't necessarily directly related to building your business, but it's now become a thing. Somebody asks you to write as a contributing writer for "Forbes" or...

Michael: Submit a guest post for Nerd's Eye View.

How A Mid-Career Crisis Can Fuel The Drive To Do More Public Work [00:04:00]

Carl: Yeah, submit a guest post for Nerd's Eye View. How do we start navigating that...? Because here's the email I've gotten, I can think of four in the last three weeks, that says, "I'd like to do a little bit more public work." And I think it always starts out as "I'd like to have an impact beyond the business that I've built. I'd like to have an impact."

Michael: Is this about advisors that want to start doing social media and books and such for marketing, or advisors that want to give back to the broader community? Like my business is at a certain level where I want to do other stuff to start giving back. Are you thinking of it in that frame or either frame?

Carl: I think that's exactly why we're having this conversation, is that's the most important part of this conversation, is to get really clear about why you want to do that thing, whatever that thing is. Right?

Let's just narrow in for a minute on just the use of Twitter for a second, as an example. Why are you using Twitter? If you're using Twitter to have a virtual office cooler, is that what they're called? Is that what it's called?

Michael: Water cooler.

Carl: Water cooler. Office cooler. If you're using Twitter as a virtual water cooler, is that okay? Of course, it's okay, but it serves a specific purpose. If you're using Twitter to talk within the industry, and maybe debate the finer points of a 4% prudent withdrawal rate versus something else, is that okay? Of course, it's okay. If you're using Twitter just to broadcast and you don't do any interaction, you follow very few people, is that okay? Of course, it's okay. Right? Are you using Twitter to have a bigger impact and build a publishing career and speak and hopefully get a book deal? Of course, that's okay.

But you've got to get clear about why you're using it. Because I have found it is so easy to get confused and waste an incredible amount of time and energy. And I think of it as like a crack dealer, right? Like, there are so many ideas I could write a book about them, I could do a course on this, I could do this and this and this and this! But just, I think it's really, at least for me, I'm doing a lot of work right now about getting clear and narrowing my focus, rather than playing the field.

I think there's a really interesting thing that happens that my friend Jack Butcher has recently been talking about. The first part of your career is about expanding as often as you can, and then you get to a point where your career becomes about making yourself scarce.

So I know those are all a bunch of disjointed thoughts. But that's something I wanted to try and nail down with you, just to process audibly. What do you think about that experience of, I built a business, and now I'm feeling this pull to do these other things?

Michael: I certainly see it as an evolutionary path a lot of firms go through. It's one thing that some of us are naturally wired towards marketing in a way that gets ourselves and our persona out there. Think folks like Ric Edelman, even Ken Fisher for what he did in writing and television, or folks like Dave Ramsey in their domain. Like there are certain people who have stuff in their head to share, a way to get it out there, and that's their marketing thing. And that's how they build their business.

And I think what we're talking about is something different. It's when you've been growing your business, and you hit that stage where it's like, okay, I think we're going to make it. I'm making some good income, my family's going to be covered, the kids are going to be able to go to college, and I'm going to be able to retire. It's not really necessarily about the growth anymore because I've got enough, or at least I'm on the trajectory for checking the box for enough. And you start looking around and saying, "What else can I do? Like, why am I on this earth? What am I going to do with myself?" I think for some advisors, it may literally be like a version of a...I was going to say a mid-life crisis, but I guess it’s more like a mid-career crisis.

And when you the mid-career crisis and you're trying to figure out what comes next, and those thoughts of impact and legacy start cropping up for a lot of people, that it starts leading us down this road like, "I'm going to take all the stuff I've learned, and I'm going to write a book," or like, "I'm going to package how I've built my business and teach it to other advisors," or, "I'm going to get active in the writing and social media realm and just like share out the stuff that I've done." We've had advisors on the podcast who have made that kind of shift.

There are high-profile folks like Ray Dalio who come to mind; he wrote his giant book, “Principles: Life and Work” of basically, "Here's everything I've learned so y'all can learn something from it as well." I think a lot of us hit this mid-career crisis stage of saying, "Okay, I think I got the business thing figured out, what's next? What else?" And shifting out towards this public lens, this public realm, this public sphere starts to become relevant with, I think, the caveat of, that we start wandering in this unknown, like, I know how the advisory business works and where my time is well spent because I've built to get here, then suddenly we move into this strange land of something different and we start asking questions or even feeling a little lost, like, "Okay, I know I want to have some impact, but what am I supposed to do here?"

Carl: Yeah. Let me just pause for a minute because I actually kind of wanted to go a slightly different direction. You can tell me which one, and we'd also love feedback, that idea of scaling influence, leaving a legacy, is super fascinating. And maybe you want to focus there.

I'm actually really curious about what you said earlier, pointing at Edelman because we could also mention Josh Brown in sort of a very...and lots of people know about the massive impact Larry Swedroe's work has had, but not the massive impact it's had on building a business. They've been handing out Larry's books like candy for years. And if you know you know, he's been massively impactful.

So there are plenty of those examples that you can point to. I'm actually kind of curious about that. Like, I'm curious about, if you take that advice of like, you need to get active on social media to build your business, the marketing advice, you've got to get active on social media, you've got to get active, everybody running around telling you that, and you go to Twitter. The problem is we have examples we can point to in Twitter, Instagram, any of these things; we can point to them and go, "Look, see, it worked."

But the question becomes, what opportunity are you looking to maximize there? Are you trying to get famous in, I guess we call...I don't even know this term but in FinTwit? Are you trying to get famous there in like the financial Twittersphere? Because those aren't clients. Right?

Or are you trying to use any of these tools, I'm just picking on Twitter because we're both so familiar with it, any of these tools to build clients that are going to come to be clients of the business, or are you trying to build a platform for you to write a book? And if you're going to write a book, what's the purpose of the book? Do you want to become book-famous?

And again, no judgment on any of these things. Or is the point of the book to feed back to the business? Or is the point of the book to launch your speaking career? I'm more interested in how you manage and get clear? Because again, I know there are more opportunities coming your way than you have time for. How do you get clear about which one to place a little bet on, which one to go whole-hog on, right? How do you get clear about all that? Does that frame that up any better?

The Importance Of Finding Focus, Getting Clarity, And Building Momentum [00:12:48]

Michael: I think the question of how you get clear is one that, well, that should matter forever and always, right? I think the entrepreneur's challenge, the entrepreneur's curse for those of us who have lots of ideas, often the biggest challenge, is not that you have lots of ideas, it's that sometimes you have too many ideas that you get going on one idea, and particularly for some of us, we so enjoy the ideas, it's really fun to do the idea and get started with the idea.

Then the idea gets boring, and we go on to the next idea. And we don't ever actually get our traction in any of the ideas because we're switching off to the next idea too quickly because, for us, the stimulation and fun is the idea and acting on it, not necessarily that "boring" follow-through phase. Not saying it's boring, but if you're an idea person who gets stimulated by the ideas, everything that comes after is kind of boring, because it's mostly about the ideas. And just knowing if that's your challenge and figuring out how you find focus, yeah, I think ultimately is incredibly important.

It's certainly been a challenge for me over the years of just trying to decide like, what is the focus? Where do you want to keep drilling down? When I started writing the blog in particular, when I started doing more speaking, and even earlier in my career, when I was still living as a full-time financial advisor and trying to build my career of like, "Oh, my Lord, there's a lot of stuff in the financial planning realm to learn." And so I gave it my all to learn all of it that I could....

Carl: Yes, you did.

Michael: So I got like eight degrees and designations out there. But at some point, whether it's career-wise or elsewhere, you have to start taking a focus. I took a big focus on annuities early in my career. That was what led to writing my first book on annuities.

Carl: Of course, selling them.

Michael: Well, ultimately, it helped to get paid at some point. So yes, we did recommend some annuities along the way, looked different back then. But for me, it started with an annuity focus and doing a lot of research and writing around annuities. It shifted to other retirement research where we published a lot around the 4% rule and sustainable withdrawal rates; there was a lot of material in that domain.

For me, the focus actually shifted over time. Because it can shift, it can evolve, right? I did annuity stuff, and I did retirement research. I'm doing a lot more now on advisor research and how we run our businesses and create fulfilling careers. But for me, it does ultimately come down to just, you've got to pick some focus and focus on it for a while. Like whatever the thing is. It could be different things over time, but it's got to be a thing at a time, or you never build any momentum to the work that you're doing to the business that you're creating.

Carl: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Because when people have reached out to me about, I think it's mainly around like, I want to have a writing or speaking career. I want to go speak at conferences, and to me, it feels a little bit like, once you get that bug in your head, there's no going back. I compare it a little bit to like you took the red pill, it's too late, right? You can't go back.

So I think there's some really important work to do around getting clear. And I sure wish somebody had sat me down 20 years ago or 15 years ago and said, "Look, get real." Well, actually, somebody did sit me down. I had a very specific conversation with Seth Godin at breakfast one morning. This was a couple of years into my writing career, and we'd become friends. And he said to me, "Carl, you need to make sure you avoid being a wandering generality and become a meaningful specific." Right? Which wasn't advice he gave uniquely to me, but that morning at breakfast, it was just he and I, and when he said that, I was like, "Wow." And I've read about it on his blog. But that idea of being...

Michael: What was it? Don't be a wandering generality.

Carl: Let's say it in a positive way. He said, "Be a meaningful specific and not a wandering generality." Which I think fills really nicely into all the work that you and I both do around specialization and niches. I think getting clear about why you're doing it. And let's just break this down just so we can be really painfully specific.

Again, I just want to use Twitter, because you can apply this lens to anything, but I think a lot of people on here will maybe relate to this. Well, at least I know I do this. Maybe there are a few other people that do, too. That you go on something like Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, and you call it “work”.

In fact, my daughter said this to me; it’s really funny to remember this. About six months ago, I was like, "Oh..." I came out of the office or something, and I was like, "Oh, man." It was like 5:00. I was like, "That was a tough day," and my daughter actually said to me, "Dad, don't give me a tough day. All you do is talk with your friends on Twitter all day." And I was like...

Michael: As only teenagers can call us out.

Carl: I was like, "Wow, that's really, really insightful. And what a blessing to have somebody provide that insight." But I think there is some...

Michael: Is that exactly how you put it to her at the time?

Carl: That's exactly what I said, “Thank you so much, darling. It was such a blessing.” But I think there is something really important just to say like, "Okay, what am I doing on here? Am I filling a need for a little dopamine hit? Am I filling a need for a social life because I've got a bunch of friends?" None of these things are wrong. The dopamine hit one might be, we might want to be careful about, but the friends idea, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

But is there a more meaningful way to get that same thing? I just think that's a really specific way of thinking about this problem. Like you think you're solving a problem of, I'm going to build a career as a speaker/writer, or I'm going to take advantage of...I have this idea, and I'm going to do some stuff in service of this idea. And it turns out that, because Twitter's a great place to have conversations, it's a great place to run into people. It's a great place to make new friends. It's a great place to make new business connections. Right?

But it's not very good for generating sales. Right? It's not very good for converting. Like my email newsletter list converts, I don't even know what the number would be, 100 times more than Twitter, but I don't get the spontaneity that I get on Twitter. So I'm overplaying the Twitter card here, but I'm just really interested in getting clarity around the ideas you want to pursue. And this could be, again, back to any stage in the business, any stage of life and getting clarity around it.

So the takeaway for me would be, just get clear, is my advice to myself that I'm giving my...this is a therapy session that you can all send me a bill. The advice to myself I'm giving is like, just notice what you're doing, and then notice that it's interesting you're doing it, and then maybe try to link it to, it's in service of what? What is this in service of right now? And getting clear about that.

Vision Statements Can Help To Maintain Momentum And Facilitate Decision-Making [00:20:51]

Michael: Well, to me, it comes back to like, for your business, creating a clear vision statement of where it's going. And I'll fully own, I was one of those people that rolled my eyes at vision statements for a long, long time. I just didn't get it; it didn't connect with me. It felt like something a bunch of consultant speakers, just like something big corporations did, and it never really meant anything.

But I'll admit, as businesses have grown and evolved for me and just you hit that point where you're no longer in the "Oh, my God, I've just got to figure out how to grow and survive phase," you get to that stable point where you get a little more time, a little more breathing room, you can pick up your head and look around and decide to do other things. For a lot of us, suddenly you find you can do so many things. You can't figure out what to do or which thing to do, or you start doing a bunch of them, and they’re too many different things. You lose all the momentum that you previously had in your business because suddenly you've diffused your energy all over.

And that having some vision statement, even if it essentially just comes down to Simon Sinek's why. If you've never seen "Start With Why" or read his book, go read his book, seriously, go read his book if any of this is resonating with you, and find what that why, what that higher purpose is, because to me, the reason why, no pun intended, the reason why that matters, it becomes your filter.

The more successful you are, the more opportunities tend to come. Ironic and frustrating for those who are still trying to get there, but it's true. The more success that comes, the more that opportunities tend to come, the more doors that tend to open, it compounds favorably. But you can get too many doors that open, and then you actually end out getting stuck because you can't figure out which ones to walk through.

And so having some kind of personal ‘why’ statement, business vision statement, to me it's not just about like the high-minded, to help people be more successful with their money kind of thing because it sounds neat and aspirational as a marketing label, the point of a good vision statement is that it's a filter. If you can't take all the ideas from your head and run it through your vision statement to say, "Would this actually be a good thing to spend time and resources on?" your vision isn't clear enough? As Stephanie Bogan likes to say, when your vision is clear, your decisions get easy.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think it strikes me that this is not very much different than what a financial plan is supposed to be. Right? And in particular, I've always thought the idea behind "One-Page Financial Plan" was that it would act as an ongoing, updated, living, breathing, touchstone, right? That I would filter my decisions through how I'm going to spend my time and my money through that. And I have started making it a daily practice. When I say started, I'm saying like I just recently started.

But the idea of taking out a three by five card every night and writing down anew the thing that you're focused on, and then writing it down before you go to bed and then in the morning, pulling out the three by five card and carrying it. I'm actually starting to write it on my forearm now with a Sharpie, right? Because I've got to use a Sharpie. And I've come up with a logo, a simple sketch that represents that reminder. Draw it every morning. When I take a shower at night, I scrub it off, and I draw it every morning and scrub it off. Just this habit of... So it's not like it takes much time.

But it's funny you should mention Steph because Steph Bogan recently said to me, and I've heard this for 20 years, that you're literally sort of rewiring the brain to think differently about those things. So I love that. I love the idea of just having a clear vision. To me, just because it's my nature, as simple as possible, something that reminds you... I have a little gift that I got in New Zealand. It's a necklace that has a little piece of greenstone on it that has become that way too. I don't have it on right now just because I'm just pointing over there where I put it. That when I touch it, I can remember.

So, right, this idea of little ritual, little things that remind you. And you've heard that forever with Zig Ziglar, right? Like the goals in the underwear drawer or the sticky on the mirror in the bathroom. But I think there's something to that. And I used to kind of pooh-pooh it as well. I was like, "Yeah, whatever, vision statements, whatever." But now, at this stage of my career, I'm understanding how important they are.

Super cool. Thanks for the therapy session. And anybody listening, if you need to send me a bill, just go straight on to Twitter and toot at me the bill for my therapy session.

Michael: Fantastic. Well, I'll queue you up bills @behaviorgap and send you the therapy bill.

Carl: Perfect. Thanks, Michael.

Michael: Thank you, Carl.

 

 

***Editor's Note: Can't get enough of Kitces & Carl? Neither can we, which is why we've released it as a podcast as well! Check it out on all the usual podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts (iTunes), Spotify, and Stitcher.

Show Notes

• Jack Butcher
• Ric Edelman
• Ken Fisher
• Dave Ramsey
• Ray Dalio – Principles: Life and Work
• Josh Brown
• Larry Swedroe
• Seth Godin
• Simon Sinek – Start With Why
• Stephanie Bogan – SUCCESS 2.0: Stop Licking the Lollipop of Mediocrity and Make 2020 Your Best Year Ever
• Carl Richards – One-Page Financial Plan
• Zig Ziglar
• FinTwit Community
• The Coming Golden Age Of The (Focused) Solo Financial Advisor
• What Really Motivates Financial Advisors – Intrinsic Vs. Extrinsic Drivers
• How Financial Advisors Actually Do Financial Planning
• The Art Of Vision Statements: Do They Really Help Advisory Firms Grow?
• How To Publish A Guest Post On The Nerd’s Eye View

Kitces & Carl Podcast Transcript

Carl: Greetings, Michael.

Michael: Hello, Carl. How are you?

Carl: I am super good. Super good, except for one problem.

Michael: What's that?

Carl: Ideas.

Michael: Ideas?

Carl: There's too many too.

Michael: You have a problem with ideas?

Carl: I do.

Michael: I follow you on Twitter. I don't feel like you have a problem with ideas.

Carl: No, that's the point, is I have too...there's too many. I feel like...

Michael: Oh, that ideas problem.

Carl: Yes, yes, yes. So I kind of actually wanted to talk about this. I think it would be therapeutic for me. I know that you've sorted through this as well. I'm increasingly getting this question, and I think maybe we can focus it on like doing public work. I think this question is increasing because the barrier to doing public work has dropped. It's so easy to do, right?

Like, it's so easy to post, share a tweet, to use the toot machine and toot. You can use Instagram, LinkedIn, publish a book; it's not hard to do anymore. And so, therefore, it's an option. And as it becomes an option, you suddenly get into some territory where there aren’t very many maps out there for financial planners who are now doing public work.

Michael: Can you just clarify what you mean by doing public work in this context?

Carl: Yeah, I think that's an important point to even clarify. So it's one thing. And by the way, I want to be really clear up front that there's no... Sometimes when you describe writing books and doing public work and public speaking and sharing things and becoming a source for people to ask questions about, sometimes when you talk about it, it sounds like it's the way. And I think some of our marketing consulting people have perpetuated a myth that it's the way.

And then there's a whole group of many of the best financial planners in the world who have no interest in this. There is no right or wrong. For a minute, we're going to focus on this one over here. What happens when you move from serving a client base and building a financial planning practice or business, to getting asked to do a public keynote? Or writing something that isn't necessarily directly related to building your business, but it's now become a thing. Somebody asks you to write as a contributing writer for "Forbes" or...

Michael: Submit a guest post for Nerd's Eye View.

How A Mid-Career Crisis Can Fuel The Drive To Do More Public Work [00:04:00]

Carl: Yeah, submit a guest post for Nerd's Eye View. How do we start navigating that...? Because here's the email I've gotten, I can think of four in the last three weeks, that says, "I'd like to do a little bit more public work." And I think it always starts out as "I'd like to have an impact beyond the business that I've built. I'd like to have an impact."

Michael: Is this about advisors that want to start doing social media and books and such for marketing, or advisors that want to give back to the broader community? Like my business is at a certain level where I want to do other stuff to start giving back. Are you thinking of it in that frame or either frame?

Carl: I think that's exactly why we're having this conversation, is that's the most important part of this conversation, is to get really clear about why you want to do that thing, whatever that thing is. Right?

Let's just narrow in for a minute on just the use of Twitter for a second, as an example. Why are you using Twitter? If you're using Twitter to have a virtual office cooler, is that what they're called? Is that what it's called?

Michael: Water cooler.

Carl: Water cooler. Office cooler. If you're using Twitter as a virtual water cooler, is that okay? Of course, it's okay, but it serves a specific purpose. If you're using Twitter to talk within the industry, and maybe debate the finer points of a 4% prudent withdrawal rate versus something else, is that okay? Of course, it's okay. If you're using Twitter just to broadcast and you don't do any interaction, you follow very few people, is that okay? Of course, it's okay. Right? Are you using Twitter to have a bigger impact and build a publishing career and speak and hopefully get a book deal? Of course, that's okay.

But you've got to get clear about why you're using it. Because I have found it is so easy to get confused and waste an incredible amount of time and energy. And I think of it as like a crack dealer, right? Like, there are so many ideas I could write a book about them, I could do a course on this, I could do this and this and this and this! But just, I think it's really, at least for me, I'm doing a lot of work right now about getting clear and narrowing my focus, rather than playing the field.

I think there's a really interesting thing that happens that my friend Jack Butcher has recently been talking about. The first part of your career is about expanding as often as you can, and then you get to a point where your career becomes about making yourself scarce.

So I know those are all a bunch of disjointed thoughts. But that's something I wanted to try and nail down with you, just to process audibly. What do you think about that experience of, I built a business, and now I'm feeling this pull to do these other things?

Michael: I certainly see it as an evolutionary path a lot of firms go through. It's one thing that some of us are naturally wired towards marketing in a way that gets ourselves and our persona out there. Think folks like Ric Edelman, even Ken Fisher for what he did in writing and television, or folks like Dave Ramsey in their domain. Like there are certain people who have stuff in their head to share, a way to get it out there, and that's their marketing thing. And that's how they build their business.

And I think what we're talking about is something different. It's when you've been growing your business, and you hit that stage where it's like, okay, I think we're going to make it. I'm making some good income, my family's going to be covered, the kids are going to be able to go to college, and I'm going to be able to retire. It's not really necessarily about the growth anymore because I've got enough, or at least I'm on the trajectory for checking the box for enough. And you start looking around and saying, "What else can I do? Like, why am I on this earth? What am I going to do with myself?" I think for some advisors, it may literally be like a version of a...I was going to say a mid-life crisis, but I guess it’s more like a mid-career crisis.

And when you the mid-career crisis and you're trying to figure out what comes next, and those thoughts of impact and legacy start cropping up for a lot of people, that it starts leading us down this road like, "I'm going to take all the stuff I've learned, and I'm going to write a book," or like, "I'm going to package how I've built my business and teach it to other advisors," or, "I'm going to get active in the writing and social media realm and just like share out the stuff that I've done." We've had advisors on the podcast who have made that kind of shift.

There are high-profile folks like Ray Dalio who come to mind; he wrote his giant book, “Principles: Life and Work” of basically, "Here's everything I've learned so y'all can learn something from it as well." I think a lot of us hit this mid-career crisis stage of saying, "Okay, I think I got the business thing figured out, what's next? What else?" And shifting out towards this public lens, this public realm, this public sphere starts to become relevant with, I think, the caveat of, that we start wandering in this unknown, like, I know how the advisory business works and where my time is well spent because I've built to get here, then suddenly we move into this strange land of something different and we start asking questions or even feeling a little lost, like, "Okay, I know I want to have some impact, but what am I supposed to do here?"

Carl: Yeah. Let me just pause for a minute because I actually kind of wanted to go a slightly different direction. You can tell me which one, and we'd also love feedback, that idea of scaling influence, leaving a legacy, is super fascinating. And maybe you want to focus there.

I'm actually really curious about what you said earlier, pointing at Edelman because we could also mention Josh Brown in sort of a very...and lots of people know about the massive impact Larry Swedroe's work has had, but not the massive impact it's had on building a business. They've been handing out Larry's books like candy for years. And if you know you know, he's been massively impactful.

So there are plenty of those examples that you can point to. I'm actually kind of curious about that. Like, I'm curious about, if you take that advice of like, you need to get active on social media to build your business, the marketing advice, you've got to get active on social media, you've got to get active, everybody running around telling you that, and you go to Twitter. The problem is we have examples we can point to in Twitter, Instagram, any of these things; we can point to them and go, "Look, see, it worked."

But the question becomes, what opportunity are you looking to maximize there? Are you trying to get famous in, I guess we call...I don't even know this term but in FinTwit? Are you trying to get famous there in like the financial Twittersphere? Because those aren't clients. Right?

Or are you trying to use any of these tools, I'm just picking on Twitter because we're both so familiar with it, any of these tools to build clients that are going to come to be clients of the business, or are you trying to build a platform for you to write a book? And if you're going to write a book, what's the purpose of the book? Do you want to become book-famous?

And again, no judgment on any of these things. Or is the point of the book to feed back to the business? Or is the point of the book to launch your speaking career? I'm more interested in how you manage and get clear? Because again, I know there are more opportunities coming your way than you have time for. How do you get clear about which one to place a little bet on, which one to go whole-hog on, right? How do you get clear about all that? Does that frame that up any better?

The Importance Of Finding Focus, Getting Clarity, And Building Momentum [00:12:48]

Michael: I think the question of how you get clear is one that, well, that should matter forever and always, right? I think the entrepreneur's challenge, the entrepreneur's curse for those of us who have lots of ideas, often the biggest challenge, is not that you have lots of ideas, it's that sometimes you have too many ideas that you get going on one idea, and particularly for some of us, we so enjoy the ideas, it's really fun to do the idea and get started with the idea.

Then the idea gets boring, and we go on to the next idea. And we don't ever actually get our traction in any of the ideas because we're switching off to the next idea too quickly because, for us, the stimulation and fun is the idea and acting on it, not necessarily that "boring" follow-through phase. Not saying it's boring, but if you're an idea person who gets stimulated by the ideas, everything that comes after is kind of boring, because it's mostly about the ideas. And just knowing if that's your challenge and figuring out how you find focus, yeah, I think ultimately is incredibly important.

It's certainly been a challenge for me over the years of just trying to decide like, what is the focus? Where do you want to keep drilling down? When I started writing the blog in particular, when I started doing more speaking, and even earlier in my career, when I was still living as a full-time financial advisor and trying to build my career of like, "Oh, my Lord, there's a lot of stuff in the financial planning realm to learn." And so I gave it my all to learn all of it that I could....

Carl: Yes, you did.

Michael: So I got like eight degrees and designations out there. But at some point, whether it's career-wise or elsewhere, you have to start taking a focus. I took a big focus on annuities early in my career. That was what led to writing my first book on annuities.

Carl: Of course, selling them.

Michael: Well, ultimately, it helped to get paid at some point. So yes, we did recommend some annuities along the way, looked different back then. But for me, it started with an annuity focus and doing a lot of research and writing around annuities. It shifted to other retirement research where we published a lot around the 4% rule and sustainable withdrawal rates; there was a lot of material in that domain.

For me, the focus actually shifted over time. Because it can shift, it can evolve, right? I did annuity stuff, and I did retirement research. I'm doing a lot more now on advisor research and how we run our businesses and create fulfilling careers. But for me, it does ultimately come down to just, you've got to pick some focus and focus on it for a while. Like whatever the thing is. It could be different things over time, but it's got to be a thing at a time, or you never build any momentum to the work that you're doing to the business that you're creating.

Carl: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Because when people have reached out to me about, I think it's mainly around like, I want to have a writing or speaking career. I want to go speak at conferences, and to me, it feels a little bit like, once you get that bug in your head, there's no going back. I compare it a little bit to like you took the red pill, it's too late, right? You can't go back.

So I think there's some really important work to do around getting clear. And I sure wish somebody had sat me down 20 years ago or 15 years ago and said, "Look, get real." Well, actually, somebody did sit me down. I had a very specific conversation with Seth Godin at breakfast one morning. This was a couple of years into my writing career, and we'd become friends. And he said to me, "Carl, you need to make sure you avoid being a wandering generality and become a meaningful specific." Right? Which wasn't advice he gave uniquely to me, but that morning at breakfast, it was just he and I, and when he said that, I was like, "Wow." And I've read about it on his blog. But that idea of being...

Michael: What was it? Don't be a wandering generality.

Carl: Let's say it in a positive way. He said, "Be a meaningful specific and not a wandering generality." Which I think fills really nicely into all the work that you and I both do around specialization and niches. I think getting clear about why you're doing it. And let's just break this down just so we can be really painfully specific.

Again, I just want to use Twitter, because you can apply this lens to anything, but I think a lot of people on here will maybe relate to this. Well, at least I know I do this. Maybe there are a few other people that do, too. That you go on something like Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram, and you call it “work”.

In fact, my daughter said this to me; it’s really funny to remember this. About six months ago, I was like, "Oh..." I came out of the office or something, and I was like, "Oh, man." It was like 5:00. I was like, "That was a tough day," and my daughter actually said to me, "Dad, don't give me a tough day. All you do is talk with your friends on Twitter all day." And I was like...

Michael: As only teenagers can call us out.

Carl: I was like, "Wow, that's really, really insightful. And what a blessing to have somebody provide that insight." But I think there is some...

Michael: Is that exactly how you put it to her at the time?

Carl: That's exactly what I said, “Thank you so much, darling. It was such a blessing.” But I think there is something really important just to say like, "Okay, what am I doing on here? Am I filling a need for a little dopamine hit? Am I filling a need for a social life because I've got a bunch of friends?" None of these things are wrong. The dopamine hit one might be, we might want to be careful about, but the friends idea, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

But is there a more meaningful way to get that same thing? I just think that's a really specific way of thinking about this problem. Like you think you're solving a problem of, I'm going to build a career as a speaker/writer, or I'm going to take advantage of...I have this idea, and I'm going to do some stuff in service of this idea. And it turns out that, because Twitter's a great place to have conversations, it's a great place to run into people. It's a great place to make new friends. It's a great place to make new business connections. Right?

But it's not very good for generating sales. Right? It's not very good for converting. Like my email newsletter list converts, I don't even know what the number would be, 100 times more than Twitter, but I don't get the spontaneity that I get on Twitter. So I'm overplaying the Twitter card here, but I'm just really interested in getting clarity around the ideas you want to pursue. And this could be, again, back to any stage in the business, any stage of life and getting clarity around it.

So the takeaway for me would be, just get clear, is my advice to myself that I'm giving my...this is a therapy session that you can all send me a bill. The advice to myself I'm giving is like, just notice what you're doing, and then notice that it's interesting you're doing it, and then maybe try to link it to, it's in service of what? What is this in service of right now? And getting clear about that.

Vision Statements Can Help To Maintain Momentum And Facilitate Decision-Making [00:20:51]

Michael: Well, to me, it comes back to like, for your business, creating a clear vision statement of where it's going. And I'll fully own, I was one of those people that rolled my eyes at vision statements for a long, long time. I just didn't get it; it didn't connect with me. It felt like something a bunch of consultant speakers, just like something big corporations did, and it never really meant anything.

But I'll admit, as businesses have grown and evolved for me and just you hit that point where you're no longer in the "Oh, my God, I've just got to figure out how to grow and survive phase," you get to that stable point where you get a little more time, a little more breathing room, you can pick up your head and look around and decide to do other things. For a lot of us, suddenly you find you can do so many things. You can't figure out what to do or which thing to do, or you start doing a bunch of them, and they’re too many different things. You lose all the momentum that you previously had in your business because suddenly you've diffused your energy all over.

And that having some vision statement, even if it essentially just comes down to Simon Sinek's why. If you've never seen "Start With Why" or read his book, go read his book, seriously, go read his book if any of this is resonating with you, and find what that why, what that higher purpose is, because to me, the reason why, no pun intended, the reason why that matters, it becomes your filter.

The more successful you are, the more opportunities tend to come. Ironic and frustrating for those who are still trying to get there, but it's true. The more success that comes, the more that opportunities tend to come, the more doors that tend to open, it compounds favorably. But you can get too many doors that open, and then you actually end out getting stuck because you can't figure out which ones to walk through.

And so having some kind of personal ‘why’ statement, business vision statement, to me it's not just about like the high-minded, to help people be more successful with their money kind of thing because it sounds neat and aspirational as a marketing label, the point of a good vision statement is that it's a filter. If you can't take all the ideas from your head and run it through your vision statement to say, "Would this actually be a good thing to spend time and resources on?" your vision isn't clear enough? As Stephanie Bogan likes to say, when your vision is clear, your decisions get easy.

Carl: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think it strikes me that this is not very much different than what a financial plan is supposed to be. Right? And in particular, I've always thought the idea behind "One-Page Financial Plan" was that it would act as an ongoing, updated, living, breathing, touchstone, right? That I would filter my decisions through how I'm going to spend my time and my money through that. And I have started making it a daily practice. When I say started, I'm saying like I just recently started.

But the idea of taking out a three by five card every night and writing down anew the thing that you're focused on, and then writing it down before you go to bed and then in the morning, pulling out the three by five card and carrying it. I'm actually starting to write it on my forearm now with a Sharpie, right? Because I've got to use a Sharpie. And I've come up with a logo, a simple sketch that represents that reminder. Draw it every morning. When I take a shower at night, I scrub it off, and I draw it every morning and scrub it off. Just this habit of... So it's not like it takes much time.

But it's funny you should mention Steph because Steph Bogan recently said to me, and I've heard this for 20 years, that you're literally sort of rewiring the brain to think differently about those things. So I love that. I love the idea of just having a clear vision. To me, just because it's my nature, as simple as possible, something that reminds you... I have a little gift that I got in New Zealand. It's a necklace that has a little piece of greenstone on it that has become that way too. I don't have it on right now just because I'm just pointing over there where I put it. That when I touch it, I can remember.

So, right, this idea of little ritual, little things that remind you. And you've heard that forever with Zig Ziglar, right? Like the goals in the underwear drawer or the sticky on the mirror in the bathroom. But I think there's something to that. And I used to kind of pooh-pooh it as well. I was like, "Yeah, whatever, vision statements, whatever." But now, at this stage of my career, I'm understanding how important they are.

Super cool. Thanks for the therapy session. And anybody listening, if you need to send me a bill, just go straight on to Twitter and toot at me the bill for my therapy session.

Michael: Fantastic. Well, I'll queue you up bills @behaviorgap and send you the therapy bill.

Carl: Perfect. Thanks, Michael.

Michael: Thank you, Carl.