Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
Dear Bev,
Are huge egos the norm in the advisor business? This is my third financial advisory firm – I left the first one because the guy who founded it was an ego-maniac. He wanted to control and have the final say on everything. I left there for a great opportunity with a much larger firm.
I interviewed with the COO, who was a woman and really sharp. I never met the founder of the firm because it was characterized that he was “semi-retired.” Not true. He is involved in every single thing that happens at that firm, large or small. I got sick of questions about how I was managing my own clients.
Now I am at my third firm – and lucky because I have loyal clients who have followed me and I have no non-competes that prevent me from taking them with me (I have brought them to the firms, too). I work for a trio of partners and two of them are great, but one is another ego-maniac.
Am I destined to work for people who think they know everything? Is that this business? Should I go out on my own? I have little hubris about what I do. We’re here to help people.
A.E.
Dear A.E.,
I’m sorry to hear of your journey! You don’t say how long you have been in the business but three firms where you are miserably unhappy is not a great track record no matter how many years. You have a few questions in your note to me so I’ll try and answer all of them.
Are huge egos the norm? In any business where people are smart and have the ability to make a great deal of money you are going to find big egos. Many people equate education and income with intelligence and success and therefore believe they are special. I’m not saying they are, just that it is a common belief system.
I’ve seen many cases where founders hold onto a lot of control. Is it ego? Not always. Sometimes it is fear. They have grown a successful firm, have made a number of good decisions and may struggle to let go and let others take over from the fear that things start to go awry. It isn’t always ego = control, sometimes it is fear = control.
The most important part of your note is your own situation and whether you personally are destined to put up with people who make your life miserable, or whether you should forge out on your own path and become an entrepreneur. That is the essence of what you are asking. Who cares whether there are ego-centric people or whether the founders of firms won’t yield ultimate control? What matters in your situation is, can you deal with these people? Can you be happy and effective working underneath them? Can you ignore what ticks you off and do good work in spite of it?
That’s a question most people have to eventually answer in their careers. The surveys that have been done by HR groups over many years continually point to “a bad boss” as the number-one reason people will quit a job. If you can’t tolerate working for someone you view as full of themselves and potentially not able to make good decisions as a result, then either find a fourth situation that might be the charm for you, or forge out on your own.
Remember that founding your own firm is not an easy fix. There are many, many pitfalls with being a business owner. While you no longer have a boss to irritate you, you will have many other things that will be stressful and irritating. It isn’t necessarily best to go out on your own, but if you can’t tolerate where you are and it is difficult for you to do the good work you want to do, then it is a reasonable consideration. Take the time with a third party to go through the pros and cons and figure out what’s best for you.
Dear Bev,
Do you have advisors who are struggling with depression because of the death or disability of clients?
This isn’t a financial issue for us. We have a thriving practice and we are working with the children and grandchildren of many of our older clients. It’s the attachment we have to many of the people who have been with us for many years.
One of our favorite clients just went into long-term care with advanced Alzheimer’s, another passed away while enjoying a cruise he and his wife had dreamed of and planned for while working with us (yes, we got the call he actually died on the trip) and another has a child who recently committed suicide. These are people we know, care about, and have worked with for years. We can support them through it, and they are in great financial shape to weather whatever comes along.
But the trauma we are experiencing is real. My team has asked me about bringing in a grief counselor to work with us. Have you heard of this in advisory firms? Are others dealing with similar situations? We understand this is business, but we’re human too and we genuinely care about the people we serve.
J.P.
Dear J.P.,
Depression is a medical illness. I am not qualified to provide guidance on how to treat it, except to say that you should consult a medical professional. I will answer your question based on the assumption that you and your team are instead experiencing profound sadness and not depression.
Your situation is one of the main reasons I’ve chosen to partner with experts in the field of elder care and aging clients. The older your clients get, the more issues they will be dealing with that aren’t necessarily financial but can be more emotional and life-changing. One of my partners, a financial care management expert, tells stories about the depression and emotional upset her clients experienced through life changes.
I totally relate to what you are writing about and it is misunderstood in our industry. I’m not sure we focus enough on the heartbreak of the elderly and the associated sadness an advisor can experience in working with clients as they go through difficult life changes.
Advisors skim over these issues – not that they don’t care, but that they believe they are ill-equipped to really help. Other than lend an ear, send a sympathy card, or sit with the family and review the planning, what does an advisor believe they can do? It can be hard to know the boundaries and know when you are crossing over the line into something that is too painful and too personal.
That said, advisors do need to have these conversations, engage in a direct way and provide adequate support for their clients. Financial management is not enough; adding in the “care” component is really critical. And, I agree, it can be very hard to watch someone you care about going through this. As I see my once-vibrant, now elderly, parents struggle each day, it pains me terribly to know how sad they must also be to lose their independence and physical strength.
A grief counselor could be a good idea. Partnering with someone who works with families dealing with these issues in care management is also a good idea. I encourage other advisors who have dealt with this issue in their firms to write in with their solutions. It is not an easy topic and one we should be raising and talking about more directly in our industry.
Please do visit our website to get some free information on what we’re doing on this topic too. It won’t help with your own emotional response, but might give you some ideas on topics and ways to talk to your other clients. www.the-collaborative.com/aging-program.
Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate students Entrepreneurship. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).
She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.
More Fixed Income Topics >