Kitces & Carl Ep 137: When Does Your Career Transition From Saying “Yes” To Opportunities And Focusing More On “No” Instead

***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

• Kitces & Carl Ep 115: Setting The Right Minimum Fee Per Client And The Revenue Model Generator
• Kitces Research On What Actually Contributes To Advisor Wellbeing
• Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• Dan Sullivan
• John Bowen
• XYPN Annual Benchmarking Study
• Stephanie Bogan
• The Society Of Advice

Kitces & Carl Transcript

Michael: Hello, Carl.

Carl: Greetings, Michael Ernest Kitces. How are you?

Michael: I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you these days?

Carl: Things are really good. I don't know that... Yeah, I just pinch myself most days. So good.

Michael: We're transitioning into spring, probably well into spring by the time this episode airs, so is just everything melting in Utah?

Carl: It's snowing outside. There's 6 inches of new snow this morning, and it's snowing all day. We were down in the desert of southern Utah. I mean, this is late March when we're recording this. We were down in the desert of southern Utah. It was 70 degrees. We drove home, it's snowing.

Michael: Wow.

Carl: Yeah. Which is great. That's what spring's all about. I'm excited about both of them. I skied this morning. I was in the desert yesterday.

Michael: It's a great pitch for Utah if that's your desired weather swing.

Carl: The whole thing I just described is South Dakota. None of this is happening in Utah.

Michael: Oh, okay. You're in South Dakota.

Carl: Don't tell anyone. Yeah.

Michael: All right. Shh. Yeah. It's a secret. Okay. Shh.

Carl: Yes.

Michael: So, what else is on your mind these days?

Carl: You know what? In fact, I just got asked this question. Where is the actual... The actual question might be interesting. Here it is. When in your career, do you think... This was this morning, somebody texted me this, an advisor. "When in your career do you think saying ‘no’ became such a deep focus for you? I have said yes far too often, and I'm starting to gain stronger convictions around how I should be editing my life, and I wondered what you would think about this." So I get asked that a lot, and I was thinking about...

Michael: I like how that's framed, just when does it switch from a yes to a no? When do you start leaning towards the nos instead of leaning towards the yeses?

Carl: Yeah, it's really interesting because if you think of a lot of Cal Newport's work, he's saying you're saying no way, way earlier than I. I've kind of always, in fact, when I talk about this, when my thinking around this saying no was not very well formed and I would talk about it, sometimes younger advisors would come up to me and go like, "Come on, man. The only reason you can say no now is because you said a bunch of 15 years worth of yeses to the point where you were almost burned out."

The Benefits Of Having A "Stop-Doing List" [2:50]

And so, I don't know if that's true or what Cal Newport, and he continues with his new book, "Slow Productivity," to be like, "Get clear and clear as early as possible. Be so good they can't ignore you." And so, there's a lot we could talk about there, but one of the tools I wanted to just...that came to mind when I got this text this morning was this idea, and I believe that some version of it came from Dan Sullivan because he's the source of all business wisdom, right?

Michael: Yes. The great source of all.

Carl: The great fount of all business wisdom. Was this idea of a "stop-doing list". And...

Michael: A stop-doing list. Okay.

Carl: Yeah. I love this because we're always like, "What do I want to do?", the vision board, all of this stuff. And sometimes I have a hard time with... I think this is because the world is uncertain, but maybe it's just me. I have a hard time with being really strategic about “I think this is where I want to go”, but I'm much better at noticing tailwind when it comes up and kind of hits me upside the head. Like, "Wow, that's interesting. I've gotten asked to speak 4 times in Australia. Maybe I should go to Australia." But I wouldn't have said a month ago, "Hey, I think my next strategic move is Australia." So, it's interesting to take the opposite side of what do you want to be doing? What do you want to be spending your time? Because that's sometimes hard to answer and it might be a little easier to answer what do you know that you don't want to be doing?

So, here's how I think about a stop-doing list. And I want to ask you what's on your stop-doing list? And then you've done a lot of work over the last 5 to 10 years of sort of getting cleaner editing, outsourcing. So, the way I think about a stop-doing list is make a list of the things that you just don't like doing. And the way I define don't like is not whether it's hard or not, because a lot of the things I love doing are really hard. It's more on energy, like which one leaves me feeling energized or which one leaves me feeling really, really drained. And what Dan Sullivan would point to is closer and closer to your unique ability. And let me just tell one super-fast story. I have this doctor friend. His name, we'll just call him Dr. Dave. And he was my neighbor. And we were good friends, and we climbed and mountain biked together, which is always handy to have an emergency room doctor with you when you're doing those activities.

Michael: It's good planning, at least for you.

Carl: Yeah, I know.

Michael: Less effective the other way around.

Carl: I was like, "Yeah, I'm sorry." But I remember one time I split my head open, and he took me up to the emergency department, and we went in the back door. And when we went in, everybody was like, "Dr. Dave!" and giving him high 5s. And the staff was excited. Everybody was excited. And I was like...

Michael: You were on a gurney.

Carl: I know. I was like, "What is..."

Michael: You were just trying to visualize this?

Carl: I was still walking. I just had a thing on my... I was like, "What is this all about, Dave? What's that all about? I've never seen... That's not normal when you walk into your place of employment to have people be really excited." And he was like, "Well, I..." He said. I always remember this. He said, "I move the meat." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, the ER can get really stressful when things get backed up. The front office staff stressed out, the nurses, everybody's stressed. And it often gets backed up because as doctors we start doing things that other people could do." He's like, "I only do what only a doctor can do." He's like, "For instance, if I need to get the person's primary care physician on the phone, most of my colleagues, doctors, will go over to the phone and dial the phone because they think it's only going to be a minute. Well, it ends up being 7, 8, 10, half an hour to get the person on the phone. Somebody else can do that." So, he's like, "I only do what only a doctor could do." So he had made a stop-doing list like, "I don't pick up the phone. I don't do that. I don't do that." And as a result, everybody loved him because things moved much more efficiently. So that's the way I think of a stop-doing list.

Michael: Which I think is interesting because I feel like the mental script for a lot of people in that position is, "Dave makes everyone else do his work. Dave casts everything off. Dave's always sending something my way to have to do for him." It's interesting that no, apparently that's not how anybody feels when Dave sends stuff to them, because Dave sends stuff to them and Dave does Dave things that makes everything work better, and these prove to be positives in the system.

Carl: That's exactly right. And I think I loved at the end when he was like, "I only do what only a doctor can do." And so I think it's interesting as you think about a stop-doing list. So, I just started making these lists a while ago, where I would put stuff on there and then I'd rank them based on the ones that I didn't like the most. I put the one I didn't like the most at the top. And then I would just think, can I delete? And I'm sure this is also from "Getting Things Done." Who was that guy's name? Dave? David?

Michael: David Allen.

Carl: Yeah. David Allen. Yeah. Delete. Could we delete it? Could I delegate it? Could I automate it, or could I do it? Or if it was left, could I do it? And so I was like, "If it's on the stop-doing list, I'm really trying to delete it, automate it, or delegate it." So, that's how I think about a stop-doing list. I'm curious how you have gotten better at saying no, and what would be on your stop-doing list or what has been that you've been able to get rid of?

Michael: Well, so you have a lot of good questions there.

Carl: There's a lot there. I know.

Why Saying "Yes" To Opportunities Makes Sense Early In A Career [8:50]

Michael: I'm going to start on just the yes-no dynamic, because I do think it's a fascinating thing, that question you had, right? When in your career, do you think that saying no became such a deep focus for you? So, here's how I think about it, at least. When we start off in generally any career, but certainly a world like financial advising, when you start off you have a lot of time and not very many clients. And so, the marginal cost of saying yes to anything is zero because otherwise, I'm sitting around doing nothing with the clients I don't have, thinking up ways to try to get clients. So, in that world, why on earth would you ever possibly say no to anything? You have slack capacity that you're trying to fill.

And that kind of, A, I find that pretty much dominates the early years for all of us. And, B, unfortunately, it can basically be sort of emotionally scarring. It's so scarce for so long, it leaves a challenging legacy for some of us later, which I may come back to in a few minutes. But I find the starting point is “I've got capacity, so I'm just saying yes to anything and everything. Any revenue is better than no revenue when I have time that I'm not getting paid for. And depending on the advisor and how quickly you grow, that could be 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 years before you really fill up your client base to the point where it's like, woo, it's getting a little busy here now."

Carl: Hey, wait. We got to stop and talk about this because we got so much to talk about, but we got to talk about this.

Michael: Okay. Go ahead.

Carl: Okay. So, I remember the story about 3 accountants that left their accounting firm to start their own private wealth management firm in Seattle. They decided that their client minimum was going to be $10 million. They had never run an RIA firm before. It took them 18 months to get a single client. Now, granted, whether they borrowed money or whether they had savings, for some reason they could afford to do that. And then they went to some crazy number. This is a John Bowen story. They went to some crazy number. I want to say a billion in 18 months. It was just some crazy thing. But they stayed really, really focused. Do you think what you just said is true? Is that what you would tell a young advisor or planner starting their own firm, "Dude, you just take whatever you possibly can?"

Michael: So, yes, with an asterisk or 2.

Carl: Because I know that's what we did. I'm just saying, is that still what you'd advise somebody?

Michael: Yeah, because, look, I hear the context of the story you just shared, and it sounds cool, right? These dudes peel out of an accounting firm and get super focused, and only take multi-bajillionaires, and they have a billion dollars in 18 months. Cool. And I'm parsing through, and I'm like, "Okay. So they probably already had 10 to 20 years of experience."

Carl: Massive survivor bias in the first place because there's a bunch of stories like that that didn't work.

Michael: Right. Yes, how many others did that, and then their spouse was like, "Dude, you've made no money for 12 months, you're going back to work and stop with this tomfoolery?"

Carl: Undoubtedly.

Michael: They already may be 10 to 20 years in their career. They've got experience, professional credibility, probably renowned in relationships in their network. I'm going to bet when they got their first $10 million client and they finally get it, it wasn't a total stranger who walked in off the street.

Carl: Totally. Totally.

Michael: It was probably someone going back to their prior world. And they had the financial wherewithal to make nothing for 18 months.

Carl: I'm with you 100%.

Michael: Nice work, if you can get it.

Carl: Yeah, 100%. I just wanted to insert it as a jumping-off point to do you think that's still the advice you'd give?

Michael: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I draw that contrast because I feel like we hear stories like that from time to time and don't acknowledge the survivor bias, the implied financial privilege and other stuff that was in there.

Carl: For sure.

Michael: So what I tell young people today in coming into this...

Carl: These young people?

Michael: Young people. The yutes. The yutes.

Carl: The youngs.

How Newer Advisory Firm Owners Can Navigate The Need To Generate Revenue Without Compromising Their Future Growth [13:28]

Michael: What I tell folks when they're coming in today is, look, the most fundamental principle to me about success as a financial advisor, and we see this every time we run our research. The single greatest determinant of an advisor's financial success is the number of years that they've been doing it. The sheer, raw accumulation of time and everything that goes with time, like practice expertise, brand, relationships, networks. There's a whole bunch of stuff that naturally compounds with time. It's not just literally the passage of time, it's the things that accrue with time. But the single number one driver we find every time we run our studies is that years of experience is a greater predictor of advisors' income than literally any other factor we can measure. And so what that means in the simplest sense is if the single greatest determinant of financial success as an advisor is the number of years you've been doing it, the single most important thing in your advisor career is to stay in the game long enough to get to the long term.

Carl: Yeah. Yep. I'm down with this discussion, for sure.

Michael: And so whatever you have to do to stay in the game is most important. So, look, if you come from a career change or a family, or a financial background that says, "I can just be hyper-focused out of the gate because it doesn't matter if I get any money out of this thing for 12, 24, 36 months," more power to you. But most of us are not in that position and don't have that opportunity. We have to make revenue happen sooner, and so we tend to. And I would encourage that, because at the end of the day, the number one most important thing is that you are in the game long enough to get to the long term.

Now, there are 2 asterisks that I would add to that, though. The first, the biggest problem I actually see advisors make when they do this, it's not that they open the net all the way up and take anybody that they talk to that's willing to give them any revenue for anything. Is that they're so desperate to get business and therefore so grateful that someone would deign to actually give them money when deep down they kind of know they don't really know that much and they're completely riddled with impostor syndrome, and they basically feel unimaginably large levels of gratitude that someone would actually pay them for this. At the beginning, we start doing things like, "I'll be your advisor for life if you do this. Oh, and I'll give you a discount for the rest of your life if you'll be one of my first clients." Don't do that. I cannot stress hard enough, don't do that.

I guarantee you that if you are a new financial advisor and you're trying to convince someone to work with you, no one is deciding to work with you because you promise in the 2060s that they'd still have a discount from you. Human beings discount the future irrationally much. On the one hand, that's why they don't save very much. What that also means is they could not care less that you are promising them some crazy lifetime relationship and lifetime discount that you will regret. Because when you hit the stage where you need to do nos and stop doing and some other stuff, the number one thing that screws up your ability to actually move your business forward is now you feel like you're breaking promises you made to those early clients that you did not have to make, that were not required to get the business, but that now you feel bad going back on your word on.

So, if you have to open up the aperture as it were to feed more widely because that's how you get to the revenue it takes to stay in the game, okay, but provide them fantastic service for all the time that they're with you. If you care that much, I know you're going to do that. Give them the great service for all the time they're with you. Charge them the fair value fees that you're charging them. If that's a little bit less because you're a little bit new, you can charge a little bit low. Everybody undercharges at the beginning while we build our courage. But they're with you as long as they're with you, and that's what makes it okay for them to not be with you when it's time for them to not be with you. People grow apart. Relationships grow apart. Professional relationships can grow apart as well.

And the biggest challenge that I see for most advisors, and why I think a lot of people like Bowen give the advice that they give...and shout out for Bowen. I have a lot of respect for his work, but it's not literally that you're going to screw up your practice by taking some non-ideal-fit clients at the beginning. It's that almost everybody who takes non-ideal clients at the beginning can't figure out how to stop serving them later when it's a bad fit. And so where most of that advice from a lot of us come from to say, "Don't take your bad fit clients," is because it's all of us who've gone further down the road and couldn't figure out how to let go of the bad fit clients, and all say, "I feel so guilt-ridden about this. In retrospect, I wish I hadn't done this in the first place." That's where that advice comes from, from all the experienced folks.

But strictly speaking, I don't think it means we have to tell people don't take what you need in the beginning years because you never get to the long term if you don't get the revenue you need to reach that point in the first place. But don't promise more than you need to promise that puts yourself at a disadvantage in the future for something that people were not actually using to make their decision in the first place.

The Benefits Of Choosing A Client Niche Early On [19:01]

The second point I would add to this quickly, because I feel like I have to throw this in, is there's a difference between setting criteria like, "Hey, I'm only going to work with clients, maybe $10,000 a year. And I'm just going to suck it up and deal with it until I get to that point, even if it takes me years to get my clients." Hey, if you got the financial wherewithal to run that runway, more power to you. Most of us can't do that, so we got to take some smaller clients earlier.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad to still say, "I'm going to figure out early on who my ideal client is and go after them." So there's nothing wrong with saying, "I'm going to tackle early to go after some kind of niche, some kind of specialization, some kind of area I'm going to get known." It's not because you go out there and say, "I'm going to focus on young physicians, and if anybody talks to me is not a young physician, screw them." The point is if your marketing strategy is, "I'm going to try to talk to anybody I meet with a pulse and convince them to give me their life savings," it's not going to go well.

If you focus into a market where you can get known more quickly because it's a smaller market, you can become a big fish in a small pond a lot faster. And what we see, even in a lot of the internal benchmarking data that we do at XYPN, there's this mentality that, "Well, I don't want to start with a specialization or a niche because I just need to get revenue going as quickly as possible." And what we find is after 3 years, the advisors who picked niches aren't behind. You don't actually grow slower. And in fact everything after 3 years, the niche advisors grow faster. So, they grow equal for the first 3 years and faster in the next 27 after the first 3. You just launch faster because it's not about saying, "I'm going to say no to anybody who doesn't fit," but you can put all your yes positive marketing energy in a particular direction.

Carl: Yeah. I think it's actually really worthwhile for us just to stick with this conversation for another few minutes. And we'll come back to the strict how did you and I learn...

Michael: The strict list. Okay.

Carl: ...how to say no to...

Michael: The strict stop-doing list, that'll be our next episode?

Carl: Yeah. No, I totally...because I think this is important. So there's a couple things you said in there. One, yeah, there's this real interesting thing that happens when you focus your marketing energy on solving a specific problem for a specific group of people, otherwise known as niche marketing. And what's interesting is you attract other people, you know what I mean, that aren't from that niche. And so, you just, all we're saying here is you have a choice, and the choice is do you want to take on maybe the operational inefficiency that might crop up later in exchange for the ability to stay in business. And if that's something you need...and by the way, it just might be you enjoy those people and you enjoy all that stuff, so there's no problem with any of that.

Michael: Well, and I noticed it's not even operational efficiency at the beginning. You have more time than you have clients.

Carl: That's why I said it crops up later. If you have 50 people in your niche and then 50 people who are of different things, you've got some operational things that you may or may not want to have to deal with later, but you have to deal with it. At least you get to make the choice because you're still around.

Michael: Yes. Yes. Because you're still around long enough to get to make that choice.

Carl: Yeah. And you may find that it's not even... What's the big deal? Who cares? That's totally fine. It's fine. And you could also say, "No, I just want to build this thing, and I can afford to do it, and I'm going to do it," and that's fine too. Like, it's all fine. Everybody loves you still, either way.

What The "Yes-No" Response Curve Looks Like [22:50]

Michael: And look, just in the purest sense, I would say, there's a curve of slow growth at the beginning, faster growth over time, as advisory firms and pretty much any business builds, right? It's the compounding effect. Same thing you see when you map out someone's savings growing for retirement. So, if you're trying to get somewhere in a straight line and it's growing with a slow compounding curve, there's a gap at the beginning before the compounding picks up. So, some of us have the financial...

Carl: Right. The boring part.

Michael: Yeah. Some of us have the financial ability to absorb that. If that's your circumstance, cool. If you don't, we need to get some revenue to fill in that gap. And so we do. But the reason to me why all of this matters, if you want to think of I can get there on a straight path or I can get there with a compounding curve, is at some point the compounding curve passes, and that's when all this flips, right? As the question came, when did saying no become a focus? The short answer is no becomes a focus when you hit capacity. When you run out of time.

Carl: Yeah. That's really interesting. I just in my head head I was thinking of what does that curve look like? It's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Maybe, maybe, maybe. No, no, no, no, no. And there...

Michael: I find it's more like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, that's going to hurt. Yes.

Carl: Oh, that's fine. Okay, fine.

Michael: Because most of us are not so clear on our capacity. I've done a mathematical analysis, and I can determine that I can handle 72 clients because the 73rd is like, "Forget that. I'm not working that many hours." Most of us don't really know where that capacity line is. And very practically speaking, there's only one way that pretty much every human being I've ever met as an advisor has figured out where that capacity line is. It's because they blew some number of yards past it and were like, "This doesn't feel good anymore. I'm a little bit past my capacity limitations. I'm working a few or a lot more hours than I would like to. This isn't going well anymore. It was. The revenue's gotten decent, but I'm working a lot of hours. This doesn't feel good anymore, and I need to do something and start changing it." And to me, in the purest sense, that's when yeses turn to no, that's when stop-doing lists show up. It's when we go, unfortunately, not just to capacity...

Carl: Past.

Michael: ...it's when we go past capacity, right? As Steph Bogan says, "Pain is the rapid absorption of learning." You can't get the volume of learning until you put yourself into some pain. I wish that wasn't true, but every advisor I've met over the years, it's always some version of that. We push ourselves a little or sometimes a lot past that capacity limit and go, "Something's got to change. This doesn't feel good. Or I'm outright burning out." And then some changes start coming, which is some combination of stop-doing lists, and just realizing we need to start saying no. Sometimes that's no to things we're going to do because we delete, automate, delegate from the framework you gave earlier. Or we start saying no, because we realize that there's only so much service we can provide in the world. And that if we're going to do our best work, we need some kind of filter over who we serve best and have the best impact with. So, sometimes the no shows up around our tasks, which is like a stop-doing list. And sometimes the no shows up around getting clearer on who we're going to serve to do the work that we want to do.

Building The Confidence To Be Able To Say "No" [26:36]

Carl: Totally. Let's wrap this one up with I want to back up to something you said. You said you could take on anybody, or it was something around...but the phrase I'm really curious in is, you said these words, I believe, as you build your courage.

Michael: Oh, yeah.

Carl: Talk about...

Michael: Let's just say I'd use confidence, but courage is a good label for it as well.

Carl: Yeah. This was in reference to kind of take on anybody that you can as you build your courage. And as you build your courage, it was just this passing phrase.

Michael: Oh, yes.

Carl: Let's talk about as you build your courage, what does that mean? What are you talking about? Because courage sounds like a feeling. What are you talking about?

Michael: Yeah. I'm trying to get people to take my advice and potentially entrust me with their life savings. And in case they haven't noticed, I'm 20 something years old and haven't been doing this very long. Or I'm picking on the...

Carl: All the stories.

Michael: There's a career changer version as well. But it's where impostor syndrome starts to kick in where I'm not sure I'm worthy, so I'm going to discount my fees and I'm going to make all these promises, and I'm going to do all these things to get you to entrust me as your advisor, because I'm really not confident that you're going to say yes to me for any other reason if I don't layer on the benefits and the other stuff. And I think just it comes from a self-confidence gap that, to me, is frankly like a natural evolution of what it means to be a professional. I actually think of it as a good thing. I put out a post recently around this on the impostor syndrome that we often go through as advisors early in our careers. And a lot of people are, you know, kind of frustrated or down from feeling it, right? We're liable to psych ourselves out. Sometimes people can get outright depressed around feeling overwhelmed from the impostor syndrome.

But to me, it means you care, and that's really good. It means you care, and it means you have a drive to see that you serve your clients better. That's what takes you through actually learning how to be a good advisor, pursuing the knowledge, pursuing the education, trying to practice, trying to hone your skills, caring enough about your clients to fulfill your fiduciary duty to them. To me, it's a hugely powerful and positive thing. It's the fuel that moves you forward, but it's basically born of a giant gap in self-confidence that's I think sort of as I see it...well, I actually now sometimes maybe regret even in saying courage, because to me, the courage is what you do in the absence of having the confidence sometimes, like how we try to power through.

I think of it more as a self-confidence gap and maybe having the courage to fight through the self-confidence gap and the impostor syndrome, until eventually we do mostly get to a point where, "Okay, I'm expert enough to know there's some things I don't know." That never entirely goes away, but like, "I know what I know for who I serve, and I'm pretty good at it." And that's where I usually see pricing confidence start to kick in and advisors start raising their fees. And that comes faster. That's usually 3–5 years in is where I see most advisors really start picking up their fees and confidence of, "I've gotten some clients, and they're sticking with me. I think I'm actually good at this."

The Value Of Saying "I Don’t Know" [30:20]

Carl: Yeah. No, I love that. I think confidence is a better word. And have I told you about my confidence and capability formula?

Michael: No. What's the confidence/capability?

Carl: We got to come up with some really better name like the Deluxe Lifestyle Revenue Generator thing that we did a while ago.

Michael: Yes, that was fantastic. One of our most popular episodes of the year.

Carl: Yeah. It's my fav. It's still we're actually going to do a whole monthly workshop on it over at the Society because people have asked so much about it. But the capacity or capability formula is what I've always called it, and it's my solution to that impostor syndrome feeling. And so I think you just, like the solution to me is all the things you said, the reason you're feeling it is because you care. You consider yourself a professional. You're actually giving advice about things that are really, really important. You don't want to be wrong. Is you're trying not to practice on people, right? And so I love the idea of always trying to have your capability, your knowledge set, your expertise, 10% above the problems you're solving, right?

So, if something comes in that's above my knowledge set...and I love the 10%, it’s fine, but if something comes in that's right at my knowledge set, fine, right? But if it's above, if it's above, I'm always paying attention to this. And I think this is an error correction mechanism, right? If it's above, I need to remember to say “I don't know.” Now, I can still be valuable in that situation, and this is really hard to believe as a young, because I didn't believe it. I can still be valuable.

Michael: A young?

Carl: As a young, it's really hard to...

Michael: That's a noun now? Okay.

Carl: Exactly. It's really hard to believe as a young that you can still be really valuable even when you say “I don't know.” The way to be valuable when you say I don't know is to say “I don't know.” People will actually respect that. And you can say, "I don't know. That's such a good question, but I know where to find out. Right? Give me a day. Give me 3 days. Give me a week."

Michael: I hear you, and maybe this might be a whole other discussion for a separate episode unto itself, but I didn't have the confidence to be able to say that in a meeting with a client for no joke, probably 8 to 10 years of my career.

Carl: Yeah. But if you don't know, you really don't have any other... I mean, what else do you do? Pretend?

Michael: Try to sound as intelligent as you can while working through the moments.

Carl: That's probably what I did.

Michael: And then, as soon as you get out of the meeting, go look it up and pray that you got it right.

Carl: Oh, crap. I hope they...

Michael: And if not, figure out how to tell the clients in a way that doesn't totally lose face.

Carl: Yeah. I probably did the same thing. What I'm wishing I would do, and I'm just hoping that people believe us, is you can say, "You know what? I don't know. That's a really good question." And I say this a ton now. A ton.

Michael: Now you can.

Carl: I know, but it's still...

Michael: You have the wisened gray hair to back any point.

Carl: It should be more embarrassing that I don't know. The smartest people I know are saying I don't know more often than they say I know. So if we could just somehow blur that there.

Michael: Because you already know they're smart, that's why you respect the answer.

Carl: So anyway somebody comes in, they have a question, you say, I don't know so you can level-set with your skill level, so that you can solve that. And you're always moving your skill level up. And I think if you can think of that as a formula in your head, it's not a rule, it's just a model to follow, you can understand where that confidence gap comes from. You feel like you're faking it if it's above your current capacity. You know you're faking it. You have that feeling. And so if that feeling shows up, maybe that check engine light in your head, you feel it in your chest, your shoulders tighten, you don't know, you start to ramble a little bit. Maybe that could be a check engine light to just say, "You know what? Gosh, I don't know. That's a super good question. But you know what I do know is how to find you an answer."

But more importantly is we can say...and as soon as you find that answer, by the way, the next time you get asked that question, your expertise level is above the question.

Michael: Correct. Now you're there.

Carl: Right? So, I just think that's an easy model for you to think about closing that confidence gap in a systematic way. If I can get cash flow questions, how to pay off my credit card question, how can I talk more about the kind of stuff I already know so that upstream the messaging is come talk to me about those questions. I'm answering those questions. I'm slowly moving up and up and up in more complex situations. And then I get to the point where I'm like, I can handle whatever, because I know I almost never know because I can just go find out.

So, I think, but that idea of closing the confidence gap and realizing, I think it's really important to remember, that impostor syndrome feeling... And we're using the impostor syndrome pretty loosely. There are people who, the reason it's called the syndrome is there are actually people who this has a different kind of effect. We're not addressing that. We're addressing the kind of fear that comes from wondering if you know what you're doing. We did a bunch of research around this, and we actually started this group of archetypes around impostor syndrome, how it shows up. And what we're pointing to right now is the first archetype of impostor syndrome. It's called the “never-ever”, right? And when you're in the never-ever archetype, your solution is fake it till you make it. Your solution is find questions you can answer that are equal to or below your skill level.

But remember, you're in never-ever for a reason. And the fact that you acknowledge that you're in never-ever, the fact that you feel that is because you care, and because you're a pro. Because there's a whole bunch of jokers out there that don't even know that feeling because they don't care and they aren't pros. And so, bless that thing, "Thank you for showing up feeling," right? It's reminding me, and by the way, I'm going to work this out. Nobody's going to die. Right? I know you think that there's lines in the…I'm just typing the email here. It's going to be fine. But acknowledging it, not trying to kick it in the teeth or make it go away, or resist it. Instead, inviting it in for tea and saying, "Hey, thanks for showing up. You've been really helpful to me. And you're actually motivating me to get better right now. And I got it from here." I think it's just a beautiful model.

Michael: Love it. Love it. And I guess now I have to say to everyone, so join us next episode, and we'll actually talk about the stop-doing list part.

Carl: Totally.

Michael: Because I do want to hear how you actually do this, how you set this up for yourself.

Carl: For sure. Let's do it in the...

Michael: All right.

Carl: ...very next episode.

Michael: Awesome.

Carl: Thanks, Michael.

Michael: Thank you, Carl.