Bankers Becoming Advisers
For different reasons, all our kids left home once they finished school.
The eldest, the family’s best writer, went west to Bathurst to study marketing.
The determined actress left Australia to chase opportunities in Vancouver’s film industry.
The quiet achiever and puzzle-solver headed for Wollongong to study medical science.
The artist is in downtown Melbourne a couple of blocks from his Victorian College of the Arts studio.
In so many ways, they show how chasing life by leaving past lives can shake, dissolve and strengthen self-beliefs, sometimes simultaneously.
It’s a similar experience for career-changers.
CONFUSING JOBS AND CAREERS
I lost two bankers recently.
They joined my Certainty Advice program seeking a career change after taking redundancy from roles as bank advisers.
They had the desire, the energy, the expertise, and a revenue base.
There was an element missing – crucial for career-changers.
They were confident charging large fees for clients with large funds but not comfortable charging career-changing fees for career-changing propositions when the client’s complexities were significant, but the funds were small.
Without the large funds, they did not believe they were worth the fees we recommended they charge to advise on the client’s issues. Early attempts had them retreating to their former propositions and pricing they were more comfortable with.
The retreat is understandable – the start-up stages for new firms are tough.
Every day in a start-up is a challenge as new owners and their baby firms stagger through the fragile daisy chain of events, challenged by the inevitable lack of resources, experience, systems, and funds.
The last thing start-ups want to hear when the days are fueled only by a founder’s will is that their services are potentially not worth the fees being charged.
Shame and unworthiness, the toughest of emotions to discuss and manage, are the greatest discounters of potential and fees.
Rather than experiment with career-changing fees and propositions in start-up, they decide to retain the fees and propositions of their past jobs.
They’ll reconsider once they are established.
Without the crucial element of self-belief, career-changing retreats into less stressful job-changing.
SELF-BELIEF
Once up and running, they plan to re-introduce their career-changing fees and propositions.
That might be even tougher.
Starting a firm from birth to standing on its own feet, built upon foundational beliefs that propositions and fees are based upon funds rather than roles, will force future renovations onto steeper career-changing paths.
As my kids are discovering every day, the self-belief needed to chase the vast opportunities in life and business means leaving some of their old lives behind.
Testing self-belief does not remove the challenges, but it helps protect against a more significant challenge – losing control of potential futures and wondering how that happened.
What do you reckon?
Family Business Adviser & Advisory Board Chair. Family Business Mediation & Best Practices, including: Family & Business Plans, Succession Plans, Conflict Resolution, Governance, Adviser Training.
2 年Thanks Jim. Wise words. Most professional advisers are obliged to work on a timesheet basis, where the time they take on a task determines the fees they charge - and rewards them / penalises clients, for their inefficiency. Success fees are useful for transferring risk to the provider, and at least offer more clarity to the client. As you suggest, value billing is the best way to go - as it forces both adviser and client to consider the value of the contracted outcome, rather than the cost of getting there. The adviser's self-belief in the value they provide then comes to the fore. If advisers don't believe in themselves and in their own value propositions, why should anyone else?