Daily Archives: May 11, 2014

Principle 16: Beg, Borrow, and Steal

I Owe it All to Others

When I was 20, I was working my way through college at a large printing company. I worked the night shift because it paid 15% more than the day shift. After three years there, I saw what was happening to the older employees.  Once they got five years in, they had three weeks of vacation and a nice annual bonus. They owned company stock and bought new cars. Many of their spouses and adult children got jobs there. One big comfy family. They stayed in their hamster-wheel jobs, content, but oblivious to the future. It wasn’t for me. One night, I was inking up my printing press on the production line, and someone called out to me up the line, “Hey, Noel, isn’t that your cousin coming in the back door?” It was. He worked the day shift, but was transferring to nights for the slower pace and the extra pay. In that moment, I saw myself working there the rest of my life, my dreams reduced to whatever happenstance would bring me on the expedient path of least resistance, the comfy but unimportant blue collar life. I panicked. I shut off my press, hung up my apron, and walked out. My supervisor, Kenny Upton, knew exactly what was going on. He drew up alongside me, and tried to tell me that the only way I would ever make anything of myself was if I invented something, received an inheritance, or won the lottery. I knew deep inside that he couldn’t be right. From that brief exchange, I learned a principle that has continued to grow in my heart and has been proven time and again, I don’t have to invent, inherit, or win anything. I can find out what successful people have done and model it.

Pretty much everything I know about being a good advisor and businessman, at least the technical aspects, I stole from someone else. I didn’t invent any brilliant, new how-tos. I learned them from others. An old colleague and friend, Ernie Koster, used to say, “There isn’t any original thought.” In business, I think he is right.  Yes, you can innovate, you can improve on the ideas of others, and you can even do a better job of implementation, and these you should. But what is tried and true is, well, tried and true.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

My first business was investment-related, but focused on retirement plans for employees of school districts, universities, and non-profits. I had no mentors, and it was a lot of trial and error trying to figure out how to build and run a business. I wasted an enormous amount of time learning the basics. It eventually grew to about 70 employees in offices around Texas, and we had 120 independent advisors. We were making it, but it was a high volume, low profit business. I never had the confidence that I was doing things right. My wife came down with a serious illness, and after 15 years in business, I sold it and retired to care for her and our two small children. When the money ran out from the sale of the business a few years later, I had to go back into business. This time, I decided to build a financial planning practice, but keep it relatively small. I started traveling around the country, visiting the offices of successful financial advisors. I would attend financial planning symposiums and conferences where top advisors were speaking. I was a sponge. I copied their filing systems, their financial planning strategies, their marketing programs, and their bedside manor.  Soon, I was out producing most of them. In ten years, we had built one of the most profitable and efficient practices in our market. To this day, I still try visit 2-3 colleagues around the country each year, looking for ways to improve our operations, our investment results, our relationships, and our bottom line.

Adopt and Adapt

Someone once said, “If you want to be successful, find out what unsuccessful people are doing, and don’t do that.” Somewhere, someone else said, “Successful people do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do.” Both of these adages are fairly accurate, but they are in the pejorative. Focus on what successful people are doing, and find ways to adapt their systems, technologies, procedures, and methods to your own practice. Adopt and adapt. One visit to the office of a colleague in Evansville, Indiana revolutionized our client filing system.  Another visit to a colleague in Hartford, Connecticut changed all my thinking about asset allocation. A visit to a colleague in Memphis, Tennessee put me on the path to buying our first tax practice. In the case of the filing system, it was as simple as using color coordinated file folders.  But, we expanded and improved it. On the asset allocation model, we refined it and perfected its presentation to clients. On the tax practice, we learned to make it more profitable, instead of just a loss-leader.

Get on the road and find out what your colleagues are doing well. Commit yourself to learning from others. Invest in your own training, but learn from the best.  Not the so-called “experts,” who write books and give talks but aren’t in the trenches everyday.  Seek out the best active advisors that you admire and respect, and learn from them. This requires humility and a teachable spirit, but it is the only way to get to the top. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Principle 15: There is More to Life

Business is a Means, Not an End

As a young business man in my early twenties, I wanted to conquer the world. Not because the world needed conquering, but because my ego needed feeding. I took pride in everything from the number of employees I had to my production rank at my broker dealer. The real trophies in life were the cars I drove, where I traveled on vacation, and the clothes I wore. I was eaten up with my own success. I relished the opportunity to interview my former boss for a job in my firm. I took pleasure in the demise of my competitors. I played an endless game of one-upmanship with my colleagues. My pride was so in charge of my life that I brooded over every slight and was filled with jealousy if my friends did well. I had to be on top, and yet I felt I was an imposter and that my success was just luck. Everything superficial in life seemed so important back then. What I’d give to relive those days. I’d change everything.

Pride is an Evil Taskmaster

I lived for business. I worked 7 days a week and thought I was having a blast. Business was the most fun thing I could imagine. I needed to make more and more money to satisfy my ego. There was never enough. I started making business decisions just for how it would make me look. Open another office? Sure, everyone will think I am a success. Hire more employees? Great, I will look important. Launch a new division? Terrific, I’ll play the mover and shaker. It didn’t end until I had nearly run the business into the ground. Pride is like a drug addiction. You feed it and feed it, but it refuses to be satisfied. It eventually destroys everything you have, and you never see it coming.

A New Pair of Glasses

On April 6, 1991, my world was turn upside down. I became a Christian. Suddenly, building the business wasn’t my first priority. Running the business ethically became my objective. As time moved along, I was less and less concerned with fame and fortune, and more and more concerned with doing something worthwhile, something useful for God and my fellow man. Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment in the law. He replied, “Love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself.” My heart began to reorient toward these two notions, the love of God and the love of others. I saw everything in a new light, God, people, business, life. I realized I had wasted a lot of time feeding my own appetites. I had been living a selfish life.

Time for a Change

I can still remember the day. I was driving into work one morning, and I picked up my cell and called the church office. Was there anyone in the hospital who needed a visit? Were any of the pastors free for a quick call? I needed an outlet to serve. I knew I had to do something more worthwhile with my life, something more eternal than just another day at the office.

All Things Work Together for Good

Not long afterward, my wife became bedridden with a severe illness and I had no choice but to sell the business and take care of her and our two small children. It never occurred to me that my wife’s illness and the sale of the business were slaps in the face from the God I had only recently committed my life to serve. On the contrary, I saw the whole ordeal as my big chance. I enrolled in seminary and finished my undergraduate degree, but switched from accounting to theology. I started a home Bible study which grew into a small community church. After four years, the money from the business sale was gone and I went back into practice. Two years later my wife recovered. All of this changed my perspective on why I was in business. The Apostle Paul was a tentmaker. He was the greatest evangelist the world has ever known, but he paid his own way by making and selling tents. He was a businessman-servant. God did not put us here to become wealthy, but to use whatever resources He has given us in His service. Now, I see business as the means to an end. What really excites me is life change. I want to live it, and I want to help facilitate it in others.

Life in Balance

I pastored the church for 12 years and stepped down to help lead an international Bible Institute that trains remote and underserved pastors in the bush and jungles of Africa, Asia, and South America. I travel about 60 days a year for the Institute, setting up new training venues, teaching theology, and building our global network of operations. I could work more and earn more, but I make plenty. It is the lonely and unsatisfied life that is devoted to self promotion and self gratification. But, if you give your life away, you will gain it back and much more.

Principle 14: Don’t be a Consumer

Always be Giving

Don’t be the primary consumer in your relationships. Jesus said, “It is better to give than to receive.” – Acts 20:35. The point here is that it is most important to deliver value in all your relationships. Strive to be the producer rather than the consumer therein.  This is true with employees, clients, vendors, sponsors, your broker dealer, your church, your children, and your spouse.  Produce something of value before you ask for anything from a relationship. Always keep the scales of giving tipped in your direction. It doesn’t mean that others can’t give to you or that you should refuse the generosity of others. But, when you become the primary consumer in a relationship, bitterness can take root in the heart of the producer. Always be the producer and people will love you for it.

Give Happily

Invest in your relationships with generosity and joy. You can’t fake this. Insincerity is a dead giveaway. You have to genuinely love and appreciate people for who they are. “God loves a cheerful giver.” – 2 Corinthians 9:7. Continually strive to add value to your clients’ lives, not just to their portfolios. Don’t begrudge the time a client wants to take showing you pictures of her newest grandbaby or discussing his improving golf handicap. This past Valentine’s Day, we held a special banquet for our clients who had lost their spouses. We didn’t discuss any business. We just loved on them. Given our average client profile, we lose several clients each year to death. Of course, we attend every funeral. I take time to hear my clients’ stories, listen to their problems, and learn about their struggles and triumphs. I ask probing questions and give genuine encouragement and council wherever appropriate. If something is really heavy on their hearts, like a threatening medical diagnosis, and if the moment seems right, I offer to pray with them right there in the meeting. I always take my time, and I am never in a hurry. These kinds of things don’t pay commissions, but they are the right way to love people, and loving people is the right thing to do. Make generous and cheerful giving a way of life.

Giving Pays Dividends

Being the producer in a relationship, rather than the consumer, is the best way to make good will deposits into your relationship accounts. “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure – pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.” – Luke 6:38. That is a long quote, but it illustrates a basic principle of life: you reap what you sow. Giving produces gratitude and a forgiving heart. If I have built up a high level of good will equity in a client relationship, that relationship will endure errors and foul ups in my operations department, it will withstand poor investment performance, it will put up with long waits in my lobby, and it will still produce quality referrals. But, if I strain a relationship that is already thin on good will, it will break, and I will eventually lose the client to an advisor who knows how to give better than me.