When advisors lose their mojo

The following is based on one of The Covenant Group’s clients. All of the names and telling details have been changed.

Over a year ago, Ron Ebdon came to me with a challenge — he’d lost his enjoyment of the business and he wanted me to help him find it again.
Ron was fifty and had been an advisor for almost twenty years. He had been generating over $500,000 in revenue for a number of years, but by the time he came to see me he was expecting to fall short of that target for the current year. He was frightened by the downward slide and wasn’t optimistic that he could reverse the trend.

When I asked Ron what the problem was he told me there were probably a number of factors involved — tough markets, a couple of big cases he’d worked on for months that he never landed, a reliable assistant who’d recently left him. But what bothered him the most was that he no longer woke up in the morning excited about the challenges ahead.

“I used to enjoy coming into the office,” he said. “Even if I knew there were problems to deal with — a setback on a big case, a client with a service issue — I got a kick out of rising to the challenge. In fact, I think I thrived under the pressure. But I haven’t felt that way in months.”

“What came first, Ron,” I asked, “the setbacks in your business or your change of heart?”

Ron thought about my question for a few moments. “You know,” he said, “I haven’t really thought about that question. I know I was devastated to lose those big cases. I’d worked so hard on them for so long, and if I’d gotten them, they would have more than made my year. I probably would have been closer to $750,000 in revenue for the year. And losing Barb, my assistant, really got to me. My clients loved her, and I knew she was going to be hard to replace.”

“In hindsight, do you think you could have closed those big cases if you’d done something differently?”

Ron pondered my question again then said, “Yeah, I think so.”

“Specifically?”

“I think I probably put more pressure on my prospects than I normally do. My usual approach is to be very objective — to make it clear that it’s their choice whether or not to implement my suggested solution. I’m there to put together some options, provide expertise — but it’s their choice. But I’m having more trouble doing that. I find myself getting impatient and frustrated, and I would guess my prospects and clients are sensing that.” 

“And how about Barb? Do you know why she left?” 

“I think she wanted a change. She’d been with me for years.”

“Would you say the change in your behaviour was a factor in Barb’s decision?”

“Possibly.”

“Ron,” I said, “you said something earlier that I think is significant — you used to be excited by the challenges in your business. But obviously, your recent challenges — the lost cases, Barb leaving — are things that have drained you, rather than energized you. So, it’s not the circumstances that matter, but your response to those circumstances that makes the difference. For some reason, your ability to respond in a positive way to outside factors has changed. Furthermore, your negative behaviour is only making it worse by creating more challenges. A couple of years ago, you might have won the cases you recently lost. And perhaps, if your attitude to your business was more positive, Barb might not have left. But now challenging circumstances are compounding. It’s a vicious cycle. And one we have to break.”

Ron nodded. “I’d like to snap out of it, I just don’t know how.”

I asked Ron if he knew why his behaviour had changed.

“I don’t really know. It’s kind of insidious.  On one of those large cases I was sitting with the prospect and his accountant who was asking me some questions about my proposal. I remember getting frustrated by their questions, even though they were questions I was used to dealing with. Small things like this started to get to me. I was losing my patience and temper much more easily.”

“Was there anything around that time that you can point to as a trigger for your impatience and frustration?”

Ron shook his head, then added parenthetically, “Only my fiftieth birthday.”

Ron didn’t put much significance in the mention of his birthday, but I actually thought we were on to something.

I asked Ron why he’d chosen to become an advisor.

“My uncle was in the business, and I’d always looked up to him. He’d done very well financially. He sold his business and retired in his early fifties. He was my inspiration for becoming an advisor.”

“Is retiring something you’d like to be able to do in the next few years?”

Ron laughed. “I wish. I’ve got my family and my business to support. After I take care of all my obligations, I’m not left with much to sock away. Unless I can find a way to take my business to another level, I’m looking at another fifteen long years at least.”

“Ron, a couple of years ago, I worked with an advisor who’d had a serious breakdown. He’d just turned forty, and the year before he’d generated $850,000. To a lot of people he was a success. But he was miserable. He was seeing both a therapist and me and was trying to get to the bottom of his mental state. One of the things that came out in his therapy sessions and in the work we did together was the fact that as a young man he’d promised himself he was going to make a million dollars a year by the time he was forty. He was close, but not close enough — and the difference was devastating to him. I’ve worked with so many advisors who’ve experienced something similar — to one degree or another. It’s a common problem for advisors, because many of them are in their middle age. And that’s when we tend to, often subconsciously, reckon with the expectations we had for our lives. The reality is, that for most of us, the ideals or illusions we forged in our youth don’t usually play out as we approach midlife. And when we get there, we have to recalibrate — we have to learn to accept where we are and set new goals, goals that are ambitious but achievable, goals that are based in reality, not on wishful thinking.

“Ron, I believe your fiftieth birthday triggered a reckoning in which you measured yourself against your uncle, whose life you wanted to emulate. Unfortunately, you didn’t score yourself well. You started to feel the pressure to measure up. And ironically, that pressure forced you to jeopardize cases that might have helped you approach a level of success you’d have been happy with.”

Ron agreed with my analysis and seemed relieved to have an answer for the way he was feeling. We worked together over the next few months creating a plan for Ron’s future that he could get excited about. He began looking forward, rather than backward, and his attitude changed. He recently reached his fiscal year-end and was thrilled to report that his revenue was close to $700,000 — he was on target for selling the business and retiring by the time he was sixty, a goal that inspired and excited him.

Lessons Learned

Ron learned that he’d lost the enjoyment he used to get from his business because he hadn’t measured up to the subconscious goals he’d set for himself twenty years earlier. Disappointment is a common problem for advisors and can wreak havoc on a thriving business. Advisors who feel like they’ve failed themselves tend to jeopardize their success by expressing their impatience and frustration around prospects, clients and the people they work with. In Ron’s case, his fiftieth birthday was the trigger that caused him to start comparing himself to the uncle who’d inspired him to go into the business. The trigger isn’t always an obvious milestone, such as a birthday; it could be anything that incites you to reckon your current situation with the dreams and often wishful thinking of your youth. Ron learned that the solution to his problems lay in accepting where he was and looking forward, rather than backward. Once he created new goals for himself, goals that were based on twenty years experience rather than mere hope, he began to get excited about his future and again looked forward to meeting the challenges ahead.

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